This Domino Won't Fall
by Windjammers
Summary: Changing history is tricky business, but never more so than when scientists in 2357 try to rescue Stuart Power from the Volcania explosion. An unforeseen event occurs which endangers the future, but will the Power Team lose one of their own? Again?
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** The following is a work of fan fiction based on the television series, _Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future_. It is not intended to infringe on the copyrights of Landmark Entertainment Corporation or anyone else who may have legal rights to the characters and settings. I do not own the characters. However, I am putting them into an adventure since the show was cancelled and the writers/producers/directors/actors can't put them into any new adventures.

BIG thanks to Kazthom for alpha/betaing this story and all her help on this one. :)

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_**Author's Notes:** The following descriptions are from :_

_**Jet Propulsion Laboratory** (**JPL**) is a federally funded R&D center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California. JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA. The Laboratory's primary function is the construction and operation of robotic planetary spacecraft, though it also conducts Earth-orbit and astronomy missions. It is also responsible for operating NASA's Deep Space Network._

_**Los Alamos National Laboratory** (**LANL**) is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory, managed and operated by Los Alamos National Security, located in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The laboratory is one of the largest science and technology institutions in the world that conducts multidisciplinary research for fields such as national security, outer space, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology, and supercomputing. Los Alamos is one of two laboratories in the United States where classified work towards the design of nuclear weapons is undertaken._

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**Story note:** This story begins 225 years after the Volcania explosion that killed Stuart Power and wounded Lyman Taggart to such an extent that Overmind had to turn him into the half-machine being we're all familiar with - except that temporal physicists living in the year 2357 don't happen to like that particular timeline...

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Tuesday**

**March 19th, 2357**

**Cyclotron Laboratory**

**Built in what was formerly the Sequoia National Park, California**

Obscurity had its advantages.

No one paid attention to you. No one noticed you. You came to work every day, did your job without acclaim, spoke to people who were pleasant to you in passing but who wouldn't remember you fifteen minutes after you were fired. To some, it was a fruitless, unrewarding existence; but to others, it was a way to hide in plain sight.

Yet, the best part of being obscure was that you _weren't_ remembered. For instance, you could walk into a high security area using your top security clearance without garnering any attention. The guards would still have to check their logs to see if you entered because they wouldn't remember seeing you walk in the door.

Being obscure was exactly the facade William Custer had worked for years to convey. Other than using a surname that also belonged to a famous military officer who lived five hundred years earlier, his only known effect on the surrounding population was the fact he was a temporal engineer with a remarkable attention to detailed paperwork.

Throughout his career, his superiors loved to foist their paperwork on him for that very reason, and that 'trust' in his love for detail was nothing more to him than another stepping stone to gaining his objective. Self-developed obscurity would only aid him so far. After that, he had to be more proactive.

The Cyclotron Laboratory was a mere 180 miles from the Temporal Research Laboratory residing in the rebuilt Jet Propulsion Labs in the San Gabriel Valley, and that meant 180 miles of geographic obscurity. William Custer had taken the paperwork his superiors so eagerly trusted him with to gain access to employment placement rosters and 'transferred' himself to the remote laboratory as the lead Cyclotron engineer helping maintain the Temporal Cyclotron, cataloging the readouts of the temporal experiments as the temporal physicists determined them to be a success or a failure. Above all, part of his job was scheduling the temporal experiments since the physicists had to use the Cyclotron to power their experiments. With that one small bit of authority, he was able to time his own personal temporal experiments without anyone knowing what he did or supervising his actions because he controlled the paperwork, the timing of them, and the amount of information that came out of them.

_Custer_. He had chosen that name specifically because it was historically familiar to the other temporal scientists and historians. It was a perfect choice. It would get him noticed at first, create a predisposed acceptance of him by virtue of a familiar name, but then he would fall back into his self-imposed obscurity. He had considered other military names that survived history - Wellington, Washington, Lee, Patton, Kirk, Pyle, but Custer had a more 'romantic' connotation given that the name was generally associated with a single moment in history rather than the rich tapestry the person wove for himself during the 19th century. In an odd way, it heralded back to a type of historical obscurity since the name 'Custer' was best known for a single battle, but few knew anything about the man himself. If anyone had ever asked him, William only said that his grandfather told him that he thought their family was descended from General George Armstrong Custer and his wife Libby, but no one really knew for sure. Luckily, no one cared enough to pursue the question. Like the man whose name he chose, he was only known for one thing - in his case, detailed paperwork - but other than that, no one knew anything about him. No one paid him any attention. No one paid any mind to his comings and goings at all hours at the Cyclotron Lab - and that was how he wanted it.

He had a plan, a single desire. He had the means, motive and opportunity to make certain he wasn't an obscure footnote in history, and once time was put on a timeline he wanted, he'd use his given name again.

William Custer, the obscure facade he carefully created, would cease to exist.

So on Tuesday, March 19th, in the year 2357, he put his plan in action.

He walked into the facility at 2:11 a.m., signed in at the entry desk, gave his ident chip to the armed guard who verified he had the clearance to go further and then walked directly toward the Cyclotron Lab. Big, thick double doors made of durable steel were the next obstacle to entering the lab. A retinal scan, a voice scan and a digital entry code were required to unlock them. Once inside, Custer walked down a long corridor where everything about him was scanned. Heart rate, pulse, DNA - everything that proved he was biologically who the records said he was. Finally, at 2:17 a.m. he entered the Cyclotron Lab itself. That night, he scheduled himself alone on the night shift. He ran through the hourly maintenance checklist and re-checked the information on each of the temporal monitors as per his own protocols, and then he sat down and began to initiate his plan.

Checking, re-checking - his plan had been long in the making and the tracking. The laws of time travel and temporal aspects of cause and effect were fairly finite to their still-young technology. There were too many theories and not enough laws governing the fledgling science. The primary understanding was that the universe had a timeline it preferred. If events were changed in any way, the universe would try to restabilize itself back to that timeline even if it took millions of years. However, if there were adjacent timelines that the universe would be comfortable with even if it were kicked off the original one, it would gladly take up the new timeline as its own.

Contradictory but simple, right?

The actual laboratory was the heart of the facility. Two enormous rooms separated by a shatterproof glass wall made up the actual Cyclotron Laboratory itself. On one side of the glass wall was the massive Cyclotron. Nearly two hundred feet high, it created a power unparalleled by anything else on the planet. It took a lot of energy to punch a hole in the space/time continuum and move something through time itself, and the Cyclotron provided that power. On the other side of the glass wall, the side that Custer was on, dozens of monitors were mounted on the walls and desks, each showing various timeline patterns, monitoring their progress, measuring their viability and longevity, but there were only a few that Custer was concerned with. The first was the current timeline they were on which had produced a self-obscured temporal engineer who temporarily called himself Custer, but it was the adjacent timelines that he was concentrating on. They showed civilizations rebuilding themselves from the ruins of a war-torn world, but his place in those timelines was incredibly different from the one he was on currently. In these others, his family had been the most prominent with various branches of the family being the predominant members for centuries following the Badderdays.

For years, he had studied temporal changes and the ripple effects of changing one single event in the past. He had run simulation after simulation to determine exactly what needed to be changed in the past to secure him a more lucrative future. He wanted the false obscurity gone and his family in the dominant position he believed it should hold. He didn't care that elevating his social status would relegate the world to a longer political and social ruin during the Badderdays. He wanted fame, fortune, power, and glory.

That meant eliminating the past competition and moving the world to an adjacent timeline.

For years, he studied, he researched, he ran a multitude of models until he found the exact point in history that began the ripple effect that turned his family into an unimportant group.

And all he had to do was change that one point in history.

He set the date on the temporal controls to June 14th, 2132. As he waited for the Cyclotron to spin up and find the correct date on the timeline, Custer pulled out his diary and read the entry from the first page. He'd written it years earlier when he had first graduated the Academy.

_Napoleon Bonaparte is credited with many quotes that have survived until our time. One is a statement that history is a set of lies agreed upon. The other asks the question what is history but a fable agreed upon?_

_One a statement, the other a question. We have sought for years to answer the question. Is history merely the agreed upon fable or is it something more? Do we cling to lies to give reason and purpose to our existence? How do we separate the lies, the fables, the truth, and the facts? We look at history through modern eyes and with modern sensibilities, not with the understanding of those who lived in those times._

The entry was over fifteen years old, written when he was more idealistic and had a tendency to write with a questioning prose. Over the years, extensive research and the realization that history really was a collection of agreed upon lies and tall tales had changed him. It had taken years of exhaustive study for him to find out the truths hidden behind the facts, fables, and lies. He kept flipping through his diary. He could see his personal changes shown in his writing style as the entries progressed. Overall, Custer had become less imaginative with his prose and more specific with his writings. He had become a more serious scientist, a more determined participant in his own fate.

He started writing his latest entry.

_Over two hundred years ago, my family held influential positions in both the government and the scientific community. University chairs, scholarships with our family name on them, libraries and high schools named for us. We were influential in the establishment of a peaceful order. Our research, resources, and family position helped move the world to that end. The stories handed down in my family bear witness to what was stolen from us. It was not a single moment in history that changed our lives. It was a ripple effect beginning at a particular point in time. Temporal theory has a single proven reality: change one aspect of history and all history changes. I alone now have the ability to correct the moment that began the chain reaction that removed us from our position. I will retrieve our legacy._

_The Cyclotron Laboratory, the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and the Los Alamos Laboratories exist in a pocket of temporal nullification. Changes may happen to the timeline, and we will not be affected. We alone will remember the changes and each timeline. This fortunate happenstance will allow me to perform the necessary changes in the timeline before the scientists at the other laboratories become aware of them and can attempt to stop them. Los Alamos and JPL have an experiment scheduled using the Cyclotron in approximately ten minutes. They wish to pinpoint an uneventful date in 2217 and move an object one day into its future, hopefully with no ill effects. As their temporal experiment occurs, I will simultaneously make my changes on the timeline. If all goes well, then Doctor Stuart Power will die in the explosion in Volcania instead of surviving as he did in the timeline we are currently on. Once this change happens, it will take approximately seven days for all changes to ripple through the timeline to the present time, but my calculations indicate that early changes will be noticeable perhaps within the first forty-eight hours. These particular changes should be unpredicted by the JPL and Los Alamos scientists. They won't be expecting these particular outcomes, and their confusion will add to the havoc and chaos I plan to create so they won't uncover the true changes in the timeline I intend to make._

_I know there is a high risk of the other scientists trying to correct the situation and keep Stuart Power alive once they realize he's been killed, so I have created a trap for them. I have pre-programmed their temporal wave to seek out similar events to the chosen event in history when they attempt to correct Power's death. The result should mimic the Brophy Theorem. This should cause my colleagues ample confusion as they try to repair the anomaly and what would be considered a disastrous situation while I maintain the new timeline._

The monitors pinpointed the moment in time Custer was looking for. Then, he began to pinpoint another date - December 25th, 2147. When his colleagues tried to correct what he was going to change on June 14, 2132, their time wave would pinpoint both target dates. The resulting 'problems' would keep them busy enough to ignore his changes.

Seven days later, his world was going to change.

**~0~0~0~0~**

**Thursday**

**March 21st, 2357**

**Jet Propulsion Laboratories in San Gabriel Valley, California**

"No, no, no, no, no!"

Doctor Philadelphia Aderholdt moved from computer station to computer station, shoving computer techs out of the way, adjusting various controls, scanning a multitude of readouts, cursing whatever gods she must have angered to mess up her experiment like this for revenge. If it could go wrong, it was going wrong. She knew it was a bad day to try to give up caffeine.

"No, no, no, no, no!" she kept repeating. "What the hell is going on?"

Doctor Elias Pitcairn was mimicking her movements as he studied the data spewing out from multiple computers in rapid-fire succession. "Delphi, feedback's coming in. Looks like the temporal beam locked on to another explosion!" he informed her, his voice louder than the din and hubbub of the surrounding panicked conversations of the lab techs. "Scite it all! Two explosions with the same trackers in one drecking timeline? Where'd that second one come from?"

Delphi rushed to Elias' side, checking his data, re-reading the information. "How? We double-checked the temporal coordinates, we triple-checked every spatial consideration, we quadruple-checked –"

"We didn't check for explosions with the exact same trackers. Blast it! The Badderdays were nothing but continual war. Explosions were everywhere, all the time -" Elias quickly placed the new data into the temporal-spatial array. "Uh, oh …"

"Don't _uh oh_," Delphi suggested. "I hate it when you _uh oh. Uh oh_s are bad. Don't_ uh oh _when we're looking at a disaster. What's the _uh oh_?"

"You remember that theory about how one person could undergo two similar tracker experiences within a single lifetime but the tracker experiences might not be seen as two separate events if viewed from some other point in time even though both could affect the space/time/historical continuum?"

Delphi shook her head. Sometimes, it wasn't fun to prove theories in the middle of a disaster. "The Brophy Theorem. Two separate events look the same when viewed from another point in time."

"I think we just proved it," Elias pulled up the new data. First, he handed Delphi a cup of coffee. Apparently, her friend didn't want her uncaffeinated during a disaster. "Look at this. Jonathan Power, the first tracker, was at the explosion at Volcania in 2132 when he was in his teens. Major Masterson, the second tracker, got him out of there –"

"And Doctor Stuart Power was killed. That's the event that we're trying to change since it didn't happen in the correct timeline. Stuart Power escaped," Delphi added. "We know every nanosecond of those events."

"Right. Well, you're gonna hate this – first, take a sip of coffee, it'll calm you - you remember reading about the explosion of the Power Base in Colorado in December of 2147?" he asked.

Who didn't know that story? It was one of the bravest, most poignant stories to come out of the Badderdays. "Corporal Jennifer Chase was there alone when a biodread and a platoon of biomechs infiltrated and attacked. It's believed she was fatally injured but blew up the base before the biodread could get any information from her or digitize her, thereby allowing the Resistance to continue and defeat the Dread forces. I did pass my history classes at the Academy. Why?"

"In the correct timeline, the other members of the Power Team – that includes Stuart Power - were stranded in the jump ship when it happened. It was grounded. Damaged from a fight. The communications systems were down so they weren't able to communicate with the base. They were working on the ship, trying to get the repairs done on it. They didn't know anything had happened at the base until the sky bike arrived with the computer's personality matrix and the spare power suits. They got the computer online in the jump ship, he told them about the biodread's invasion, and then they flew to the base to find it nothing but rubble. Everything destroyed, mountain caved in, biobums crushed, and minute traces of a single human's remains somewhere in the debris. Power wasn't going to let Chase rest at the bottom of an imploded mountain so they searched for any sign of her. A few remains were found a week later. Genetic tests proved that they belonged to Corporal Chase. They buried what they could. We know how the war went after that."

"Yeah? And now?"

"Now, in the altered timeline with Stuart Power dead, things didn't quite happen that way." He showed her some of the new results depicted on their monitors. "Obviously, in the new timeline, Stuart wasn't in the jump ship when the Power Base explosion happened, but the rest of the team was. The ship was flying, not stranded, and they were heading back to the base at top speed because they knew it was under attack. But here's the kicker - in the newly altered timeline, Jonathan Power, our first tracker, was speaking to Corporal Chase during a vid-talk with the rest of the team listening in when she blew up the base."

No! "Please, don't say it – don't say it –"

Elias could only shake his head sadly. "Got to say it. In the altered timeline, both Major Masterson, our second tracker, and Captain Power, our first tracker, were at the explosion of Volcania in 2132 _and_ were connected to the Power Base explosion via the vid-talk when Corporal Chase destroyed it 2147."

No, no, no, no, no.

Delphi sat down in the nearest chair and took a big sip of coffee. "And with the timeline altered, that created a temporal and spatial anomaly that linked both points in time because they reflected similar patterns."

"Two explosions," Elias interrupted. "With the two key individuals we used to track and pinpoint the moment in 2132 connected to both events in the altered timeline. We didn't see it. It stealthed in under the sensors."

The Brophy Theorem. It was true. Why did it have to be true? Delphi began repeating everything out loud. "They witnessed both explosions which means that both points in time are connected by individual experience and result. We try to aim for one, and we hit both even though they're, what, fifteen years apart? All because both explosions happened in both time lines but our two trackers we used to pinpoint the temporal coordinates for the first explosion were there for the other in the altered timeline. Not in the original and we didn't see it on the adjacent lines." Maybe repeating herself was a coping mechanism due to a disaster unraveling before their eyes and the semi-lack of caffeine? It must have been since Elias pushed her coffee cup toward her again.

"And hit them we did," Elias showed her. "I've never seen readouts like this before. No one has. Time waves are jumping off the grids. Look –" he pointed to the monitors, each showing a distinctive moment in their rescue experiment. He tapped the screen of the first monitor. "We focused our time wave on Volcania in 2132. Doctor Stuart Power's location, to be specific." Then he tapped the second monitor. "We tracked the lifelines of both Major Masterson and Captain Power to help pinpoint and intersect the temporal coordinates and exact spatial location of Doctor Power." On the third monitor, "We aimed the temporal beam directly for the moment before the explosion reached Doctor Power so we could extract him and move him forward through time by just a day or two in order to save his life." Then, he turned the fourth monitor toward Aderholdt. "We didn't miss it, but what we did do went haywire - and we did something none of us anticipated."

"How bad?" Delphi asked, dreading the answer she was hoping she wouldn't hear.

Elias cleared his throat and then turned his seat to face her. "Theoretically, in situations like this, it's thought that we'd hit one or the other temporal coordinates. In our case, the temporal beam _could _have targeted Corporal Chase instead of Doctor Power."

"Could have?" Delphi heard the tonal change in Elias' sentence.

"It _could_ have, but -"

"But?" Delphi asked.

"The beam splittered."

Delphi closed her eyes in utter annoyance. She took another large sip of coffee. "It splittered. It splittered?" Splittered - the word developed by former temporal physicists to combine _split_ and _splintered_ when describing what a problematic time wave looked like if viewed. It was a theoretical view no scientist ever wanted to witness due to the extent of the oncoming disaster should one splitter. "I didn't think it could do that. We've never seen it do that. No one has. Over one hundred experiments, it's never done that. Splittering is just theory."

Elias sat back and nodded. "Yeah. All new. Even Brophy's Theorem which isn't theory anymore doesn't hint at splittering."

Delphi considered the possibilities. "Splittering means that each fractal of the time wave is weaker than the whole. Theoretically, that means it caused the targets to deconvolute. Their atoms would have been scattered all over the time continuum. They'd be dead."

Elias shook his head. "That didn't happen. According to this information, the beam splittered into two wave fractals, each wave fractal went for a different target. We reached Stuart Power in Volcania in 2132, and we hit the moment before Corporal Jennifer Chase was killed in the Power Base explosion in 2147. Right now, it looks like we grabbed them and moved them, and there's absolutely no scientific reason how that could happen. Scite it all! We should have checked further down the trackers' futures for similar moments in the altered timeline before trying this experiment."

"We checked absolutely everything we could think of," Delphi said, somewhat consolingly. "We went down the checklist, ten years in both directions to determine the magnitude of changes in the timeline and extrapolated others. We even went beyond the checklist. We spent a full day double-checking every moment we could. This is something we didn't see."

"Should have gone twenty years," Elias muttered.

"The equipment doesn't let us extrapolate that far," she reminded him. "It can only handle ten years before or after an event when trying to follow temporal ripples in altered timelines." She paused for a moment before saying, "I really hope our secondary experiment we ran on Tuesday didn't have an effect on any of this."

"It didn't," Elias declared. "There's absolutely no connection. I'd stake all our reputations on it. All we know is that the secondary experiment probably worked."

"We do?" Delphi asked him.

"Well, yeah," Elias explained. "Sort of. I mean, if it didn't work, we'd know about it by now, wouldn't we?"

One of the temporal technicians handed Elias another readout. The look on his face startled Delphi. Elias didn't really get blindsided. He was one to 'roll with the punches' as the old saying went.

"Please tell me it doesn't get worse."

"It gets worse."

"I said please," Delphi groaned.

Elias pointed out another computer monitor. "I don't have confirmation yet, but it looks like the Power Base explosion may have translated through the wave fractals since we didn't account for it. It made each fractal as powerful as a single time beam in itself. The fractals would have had the ability to grab both the targets and move them intact to another time."

"Alive? Not deconvoluted?" Delphi grabbed the readouts and started perusing them herself.

"Maybe. Theoretically. But look at this." Elias pointed to one particular reading. "The extra power going through the fractals affected the relocation coordinates for both ends of the splittered beam. We don't know where Stuart Power was sent to. All we know is that he wasn't moved forward twenty-four to forty-eight hours to the pre-selected site we chose in 2132. He's lost in time at the moment. As for Chase, it looks like the beam may have returned her to one of our geo-temporal test locations months after the Power Base explosion. In 2148."

They lost Stuart Power? They got Chase? Oh, things just kept getting worse. "This data isn't solid. How do we know Chase was transported to a test site?"

Elias pointed to a set of temporal readings. There was an algorithm printed out that was only evident when looking back in time and geography at other temporal experiments. There was no longitude or latitude, just the numbers indicating that the mystery site had been touched by time waves before.

Delphi held her breath for a moment. "Which one? We've got hundreds. And is she dead or alive?" Dead. Jennifer Chase HAD to be dead… history couldn't be changed that much without catastrophic failures occurring…

"I don't know yet. All of the alterations in the new timeline haven't caught up with us. We won't know for a few days of the full extent of what's happened. All we can say is that the data we're getting right now shows that Chase was sent to a temporal test site in 2148. Look." He pointed out a particular readout. "We haven't been able to distinguish locations yet by the algorithms, but wherever she was sent has our wave signature on it. Ours. JPL's. That means that it's been used at some point as a target location for one of our temporal experiments, not Jillian's at Los Alamos. We can eliminate their test sites, but we can't get a lock on the actual geographic coordinates yet. There's just too much turbulence in the time field."

Delphi nodded her head, then noticed her coffee cup was empty. How did that happen? She didn't even remember drinking the entire cup. She needed to work off some worried energy and she was going to need a refill. She stood and began to walk out. "Whenever we move something through time in our experiments, it creates an atmospheric disturbance at the relocation site, right?"

"Yeah, according to the data, there could be some unusual cloud activity developing around the target hour. Maybe some temperature fluctuations at the moment when the time wave deposits its transportee to the target moment. Who knows what else. The time wave does some things we haven't figured out yet, and there aren't any surviving records from the Badderdays that tell us about the weather."

So few records of that time survived to reach the 2350's. Maybe… "About twenty years ago, a team of geologists began a study on the geology of the various continents during the Badderdays. They were trying to determine the changes the wars caused in the planet during that time. Start checking their records to determine any readable weather patterns from the Badderdays at any of our test sites. See if anything unusual happened at any point. Maybe we can track Chase that way. Try to find Stuart Power. Tell the Cyclotron Lab to power down and run a diagnostic on the equipment. Discontinue any and all temporal experiments until we get this problem fixed. And keep an eye on things. Let me know the moment we know anything. I'll be back in a few minutes."

"You've got it," Elias' voice carried behind her. "Make another pot of coffee! Today's going to be a long one."

This was bad. This was very bad. In the original time line, Doctor Stuart Power had not died. He had escaped from Volcania. Then, 'something' happened. The timeline was suddenly changed by forces unknown and so far, untrackable. Stuart Power was dead. Something/someone/somewhere had affected the timeline. Only people in areas like JPL and Los Alamos and the Cyclotron Laboratory itself who were temporally shielded from changing timelines would know of the changes. Every resource available at all three laboratories had been focused on repairing that problem the moment it was discovered. Now, to find out that the Brophy Theorem was real? That a similar moment in time could misdirect and splitter the temporal beam going back in time? Who would have thought that was actually possible?

Then, a stray thought passed through her mind – had _they_ changed history by _trying_ to change history? Did they help kill Stuart Power by trying to save him?

But did they change history itself? Was the behavior of the timelines only an effect of the Brophy Theorem? Was it only an effect of the splittering? Could it be both?

But weren't they responding to someone else's activities that changed the past in the first place?

Instead of a simple case of cause and effect, could they have initiated a complicated case of effect and cause?

These questions could make someone's mind run in circles trying to figure out the answers.

What was worse, until they had solid Intel, Stuart Power was still technically 'dead', and Jennifer Chase could technically be 'alive.' This was very bad, historically speaking. Stuart Power had led the Power Team, his calm rationality leading them from one tactical victory to the next. It was his incredible intellect that allowed the war to be won by the Resistance. He was revered as a hero of the Badderdays, one who almost single-handedly focused the full force of the Resistance firepower against Dread's armies and was the one who accepted the unconditional surrender of whatever surviving Dread forces still existed at the end. True, he did ask the Resistance Council for mercy for the youngest Dread Youth, claiming they had been brainwashed, but that was the extent of any recorded magnanimity toward the Dread forces. There had never been any indication they were spared by the victors.

Jonathan Power had been humanity's avenging angel. According to every historical record and folktale that survived, it was losing Jennifer Chase that turned Jonathan Power into a fierce, unforgiving fighter. It was what turned his ideals on their heads. It was what gave him the angry, vengeful edge to defeat Dread. It made him a deadly foe that hunted the enemy without mercy, destroyed every vestige of Dread and Overmind in existence, and put an end to the Badderdays. His father might have been the intelligence behind the Resistance, but Jonathan Power was the driving force guiding it. Psychologists had studied the results of that particular event on Power's psyche for over two hundred years, trying to understand the exact reasons why losing Chase turned a once-idealistic person who valued all human life into someone who could wipe out a Youth division without losing any sleep. The studies all had varied conclusions. The lack of knowing the exact state of their relationship had meant no concrete diagnoses could be made. There were theories of a great romance between them, stories of unrequited love, tales of a not-quite-performed wedding... now, if Chase just happened to be alive…

But, then again, if she had been fatally wounded – which she might have been...

Scholars, historians and novelists believed it possible since there had been no evidence to the contrary. A lone soldier, fatally wounded, taking down the enemy in a final desperate act was much more attention-getting and dramatic than other scenarios, so that one idea had survived over two centuries. The problem was that no one knew if it was true. There had been no contact between Chase and the team during those last critical moments in the original timeline. Everything about what happened in those last few moments was merely supposition on the parts of historians given what was known of Chase's personality and character and the computer's report of what happened before the personality matrix download. Now, even in an altered timeline, if she had been fatally wounded, then she would have bled to death within a small window of time from the extensive wounds she must have received from the biodread Blastarr, right? They may have just moved her through time from the base explosion to a test site where she would quickly die. Power would never know she was alive, and he would become the fearsome soldier who saved the world – according to history. They could still find and rescue Stuart Power and have him play his part in the Resistance. Everything could still work out.

Unless the 'gravely wounded soldier making a final stand' scenario wasn't true and Chase wasn't fatally injured in those last few moments. She could be very much alive and well and transported months forward through time. She would try to contact Power. Power wouldn't become the deadly fighter and the entire war against Dread could change. The Badderdays wouldn't be just the Dread Wars anymore. It could be the entire time from then until the 2350's. One single change in history could change all history.

She was reminded of her temporal physics professor at the Academy. He would address each class on the first day with the same speech. She had thought it ridiculous at the time, but after all those years, she'd found it extraordinarily prophetic. _"Time is like a game of dominos. You stand dominos beside each other, one after another, but we're talking maybe trillions of dominos. Then, you tip the first one over and it falls against the next one and it falls against the next one. Eventually, one by one, they'll all fall down. That's the way dominos are supposed to work. When that happens, everyone's happy. Life's working like a well-oiled machine." _

"_Now, imagine a domino doesn't fall or it doesn't fall the way it's supposed to. You've got to figure out why. Then to fix the problem, you've got to find and move that one particular domino, but you can't always see which domino it is at first. You have to look long and hard. You think it sounds easy? It's sciting hard. Temporal physics isn't that simple. As physicists, you're going to be faced with the problem of watching each and every one of those trillions of dominos, knowing the entire lifestory of each domino and how it fits into the grand scheme of things, how it affects the dominos around it, how it will affect a domino ten feet away, knowing exactly where it has to go in the row, exactly when and how it has to fall. You'll have to know that by making one change on one domino, you will change the entire flow of the row as it falls. Everything changes. Speed, consistency, smoothness, correctness."_

"_Now imagine that for every timeline in existence, there are hundreds, thousands, millions of adjacent timelines. For every moment in history, there is a multitude of choices that can be made by every person alive. Each choice creates a new timeline. That means timelines increase in number exponentially. And if each choice is a domino, then that's a sciting lot of dominos to fall and keep up with, right?" _He would pause for a moment and then ask,_ "Sure you still want to be a temporal physicist?"_

As a student, she never forgot that analogy. As a physicist, she found it somewhat elementary but accurate.

However, their current situation wasn't just one known point in time out of place. It was two and they honestly didn't have all the information they needed regarding Chase. If they couldn't repair those moments that had been changed, then humans could lose that war if they lost the legendary fury of Jonathan Power, a man who turned his anger into an all-out campaign to destroy Dread because... why? He had lost someone close to him? He lost a close friend? Or maybe he lost his heart's reason to live? No one really knew.

Delphi stopped walking and was about to take another sip of her coffee when she remembered her cup was empty. She had to contact Professor Jillian Barrett at Los Alamos with the updated news. She wouldn't like the results either, especially with the news that the Brophy Theorem was now law and splittering was a reality. She'd have to contact the Cyclotron Laboratory as well to get the equipment diagnostic status from them. The scientists at the Cyclotron Laboratory were more like equipment technicians rather than scientists. They kept the temporal equipment working. They didn't exactly work with actual temporal experiments such as pinpointing dates and target events. Still, their information about the Cyclotron's performance in the experiment would be valuable. They had to find out how this scite-up happened.

Sometimes, being a temporal physicist was not fun.

And given the stress she was faced with that day, it was definitely not a good time to think about giving up caffeine. She'd think about that in a few days.

**~0~0~0~0~**

William Custer sat at his desk, ignoring the data in front of him. He was listening intently to the conversations around him. For two days, there was a near panic when the realization was made that Stuart Power had been killed and the world had changed. Then there was the nearly hopeful comments about the rescue mission to move Stuart Power forward in time to save him from the Volcania explosion, now everyone at the Cyclotron Lab was talking about how Stuart Power's rescue had failed and how the time wave did something unexpected. All resources and sensors were targeted on the Badderdays to try to track exactly what happened and where he went. What was surprising was that no one was discussing Chase's inclusion in the rescue or the fact that she was somewhere in 2148.

Everyone was so busy trying to figure out what to do, they weren't looking for the reasons why it happened. That meant William was still safe and he had time to make contingency plans if necessary.

In an almost agitated fit of near-accomplishment, he wrote a quick note into his journal.

_It's been two days since I changed the original timeline. The attempt by Aderholdt and Barrett to 'correct' what I have done to the timeline has also failed. According to all reports, Stuart Power is missing from the timeline. I had wanted him dead. Only with him dead would my family regain its natural status. Missing, there is still a chance that he was successfully moved and could reunite with his son and the Resistance but only if he's within a certain time range. With the labs temporarily discontinuing any temporal experiments until this situation is 'corrected' to their satisfaction, I will be unable to locate Power or make any adjustments myself. I would have no method by which to hide my movements. _

_A new development has occurred that I had not intended. Although I foresaw the possibility of the time wave splittering into two fractals and hitting both pre-determined targets, I did not take into account that the fractal would be strong enough to move both Chase and Power through time. All research shows that the fractals are weaker than the time wave itself and would deconvolute the targets. I had considered the deconvolution of Stuart Power as a back-up plan should mine not attain its objective of destroying him. As it is, there is evidence that Chase was moved to the year 2148 but Power is still missing. I had considered Chase unimportant to my history, but that opinion may change given these new parameters. However, Stuart Power's death is essential to my family's elevation to its rightful place._

_JPL and Los Alamos are considering various scenarios. Although it would be to my advantage if Power were ripped apart by the fractal and lost to the continuum, there are indicators that he was transported elsewhen like Chase was. If that's the case, then I will have to develop another plan to destroy him. Until more details come down the timeline, I will have to wait. _

He put away his journal and went back to working on his superior's detailed paperwork, appearing as if he didn't have a care in the world, remaining obscure.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thursday**

**July 4th, 2148**

**2:45 p.m. **

**Power Jump Ship**

**Phoenix, Arizona**

Fourth of July.

There were no fireworks, no hamburgers or hotdogs on the grill, no Boston Pops Orchestra, no parades… Ah, so much for the long lost days of burgers and milkshakes.

After the wars, all holidays including the Fourth of July were the same as any other day. People got up, scavenged for food or other resources that they needed, tried to survive another day. For the Power Team, _that_ particular Fourth wasn't quite like any other day for them. Usually, they had daily routines to attend to. These routines had established themselves months earlier. It didn't matter what the chore, mission or assignment they were about to go on, each person still had to perform the same routine day after day - gathering Intel of all of Dread's activities which was a never ending task.

Intel gathering had become perhaps the most monotonous routine. Whether in the control room of the Arctic base or on the jumpship, each man sat at a different console and compiled any and all information gathered over the previous hours, collating the details and cataloging troop movements and Resistance efforts. The information didn't waver much from day to day. Dread moved troops into an area, locals tried to escape the area, Resistance forces worked overtime helping civilians get to safe areas, soldiers would fight biomechs and Soaron... same news, different day.

As routine as the information could be, it had to be distributed quickly. To that end, Scout had worked for months building the hardware necessary for the jumpship's computers to connect with Mentor, their computer personality matrix and database. The idea for the connection had first been planned out by their pilot Jennifer Chase, but they lost her before the plan was realized. Scout had worked long hours to make that plan come to fruition, and when they were on the jumpship, they could speak with the hologram. They could send the information they gathered to him and then he could filter it through to particular bases and funnel it to outlying groups via radio waves dated with time stamps. That way, information wasn't duplicated. All in all, it saved time, and there was a growing fear that time was something they were running out of. The war had ramped up in the last few months to a level no one had ever experienced before. One theory was that since Dread wasn't human any longer, he didn't need sleep. He could wage war every hour of every day and give it his personal attention. Resistance forces were stretched to the limit in both resources and physical strength. Every day, there were battles. There wasn't a single day of rest for anyone. Nerves were frazzled and emotions were ripped. People were on edge. No battle was the simple hit-and-run so well known in previous years. Now, they were destructive massacres where both sides fought until one side claimed the field by slaughtering the other.

Whoever won the war would win it by utterly destroying the enemy.

However, on that Fourth of July, the Power Team wasn't fighting. They weren't gathering _military_ Intel. Instead, they were working for the third day on a scientific research mission which was nothing more than a fancy way of saying they were gathering Intel to see if Dread was up to something even more sinister. Like any other day, it drifted by without recognition and each man focused on the task at hand.

The daily tasks were necessary work, but there was a growing annoyance with the _routineness_ of it all. There was little amiable conversation, few jokes, no songs playing over the speakers, no whistling while working, nothing from _before_. Everything and everyone was serious. It seemed as if what they were fighting for didn't have the same hold on them as it once did. Preserving anything from the past or re-building the world was far from their minds. The main goal was to survive the present and destroy anything remotely connected to Dread, even if it cost them dearly. Again.

No matter how bad things were in the present, Hawk, Tank and Scout half-heartedly tried to interject a little of the old give-and-take of their conversations from before, but Jon wasn't interested. He didn't smile anymore, didn't make any kinds of jokes. He was angry all the time. It hadn't interfered with his duties; in fact, it had made him one of the most ferocious fighters in the war. Losing Jennifer had changed him. It shut down his idealism. Hawk was worried that the anger and vengeance would burn out his friend from the inside, so they tried to get him to laugh, to not be so serious all the time, to remember that good times had existed once and that there were still good times to be had if they won the war. He didn't respond often, but it didn't stop them from trying.

That morning of the Fourth, they were investigating a series of storms that had been reported sprouting up between what used to be the San Gabriel Valley in California to Los Alamos, New Mexico for the last seven days. The storm would last one hour and then stop, then start again an hour later and be even stronger. Stronger winds, more intense lightning, louder thunder. Someone could almost set a chronometer by it. The one fact that defied explanation was that the storms didn't move. They had stayed over the exact same stretch of land for the last seven days despite the high winds and tornadoes being recorded. Their fear was that Dread was experimenting with weather-controlling machinery. It wasn't impossible. He'd created some devastating weapons over the years, but until they could get more data, they wouldn't be able to deduce any concrete information or accurate scientific theories. So for the last three days, they gathered data, timed the storms, gauged what was going on within the storm clouds. At that moment, they were waiting for the next storm to start so they could take more readings.

It had been quiet for too long, so Scout broke the silence. "Storms have been here for seven days. We've been tracking them for the last three. Data's the same. Nothing's changing. The next storm's about to start and it'll be more of the same, only stronger. We need a break. Anybody got any interesting Fourth of July stories?"

"2127," Tank answered quickly.

Ah. Conversation. Good way to break the monotony.

"2127?" Hawk asked.

Tank nodded. "The last fun Fourth of July I had. I was in New York. My brother was scheduled to ship out the next week for his new post, and I'd been told to report to Babylon 5 after my Academy graduation, so we were trying to enjoy our down time by taking some R&R there. We had just left the gym where we'd been playing basketball. We had reached a hotdog stand near Central Park when the fireworks started. Everyone there just stopped and watched them. We could hear bands playing in the park. I think some people started singing. That was the best hotdog I remember ever eating. After that, I was fighting battles for years on the Fourth."

Hawk almost laughed. "2127 was my last fun Fourth too," he mused. "Me, Joanna, Stuart, Morgana, and the kids all went camping. We could see the fireworks from the campsite. Jon," Hawk looked over at him, "do you remember that?"

Jon thought for a moment before nodding. "If I remember correctly, you and Dad got into a very intense discussion of the best way to make s'mores."

"Mine was right, Stuart's was wrong," Hawk quickly added.

Scout looked up from the monitor, a slight grin on his face. "Storm's starting again, it's stronger than the last, and dare I ask? What is the best way to make s'mores?"

**~0~0~0~0~**

**2:47 p.m.**

**Somewhere near what used to be JPL in the San Gabriel Valley…**

_Surrender in the name of Lord Dread!_

_Go to hell!_

Her eyes never left Blastarr as she reached back and triggered the self-destruct on the power source - the heat blasted her down to the ground; the flames were all around her -

_JON! TAGGART!_

The screams, the yells, was that Mentor's voice? It sounded wrong.

Then there was the pain.

Pain…

She felt pain _then_.

She felt her body wrenched away, torn from the heat and the flames, through an airless void into a bitterly wet cold.

She felt pain _now_.

Every breath, every movement sent pain screaming through her nerve endings.

How… where was she?

She couldn't focus.

She couldn't see.

Thunder echoed in her ears.

She felt dirt and rock beneath her…

It was raining. Torrential rains. Something hard was at her back - was it stone blocks? She couldn't tell. She could feel the soft ground beneath her. Her clothes were soaking wet, filling with mud. She could feel herself sinking into it. The air was cold. Very cold. Ice was hitting her face, snow, rain…

She was hurt. How? She didn't remember… it didn't matter. Almost unconsciously, as if by habit, guided by procedures drilled into her time and again – she moved her arm - pain shot through her shoulder - but she pressed the emergency beacon on her wrist communicator.

Help would come.

Help was coming.

She kept telling herself that help would be there soon. Just keep breathing. Help was coming.

Her last conscious thought was that she thought she had been inside the base moments ago… She was talking to Jon… Blastarr was coming…

**~0~0~0~0~**

Hawk couldn't resist. "First, you toast the marshmallow over the open campfire. You know, one of those big marshmallows you had to buy special, not the usual large ones that aren't as big. Then –"

BEEP

BEEP

"What the –" Hawk immediately turned back to his control panel. "Jon, there's a signal coming over our secure emergency frequency," Hawk tried to enhance the signal. "It's coming from the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles."

Scout glanced back. "That's one end of this storm system we're tracking."

Jon moved quickly next to Hawk. "We're the only ones with access to the secure frequency, and all four of us are here. What's the pass code?"

Hawk checked… Hawk double-checked… "That's not possible. Mentor, are you reading the pass code on the signal?"

Mentor looked down at both Hawk and Jon from a computer screen as he analyzed the signal. "The pass code is the one assigned to Corporal Chase. It is authentic. The signal matrix is originating from her communicator." His voice sounded absolutely stunned.

"That's not possible," Jon whispered, repeating Hawk's denial.

Mentor quickly analyzed the frequency. "The signal is gone, Captain. My sensors indicate that the winds have grown stronger in that area. It is possible that the interference from the storm caused a random signal to mimic Corporal Chase's pass code."

"Jon?" Hawk looked at his friend.

"It's impossible. The code runs on a personal DNA-based frequency. It can't be duplicated or mimicked," Jon muttered. "Besides, Jennifer's dead, Hawk. There was nothing left in the remains of the base. Her communicator was destroyed. It's got to be a trap. What's in the San Gabriel Valley?"

"In this particular location - it's where the old Jet Propulsion Laboratories were located. The buildings were used as temporary settlements for nomads for years after the Metal Wars." Hawk answered quickly. "There's nothing there now but structural debris since earthquakes and artillery have pounded that area for the last few years."

"I've heard of the Jet Propulsion Labs," Jon told him. Something was tugging at his memory. "Mentor, what did they study there?" It had to be a trap. Jennifer was dead, but how could anyone have gotten her communicator? It would have been destroyed when the base exploded. And how could they have used it? It was based on her specific DNA.

But only _her_ communicator could produce _that_ signal. It couldn't be duplicated, not with the multiple layers of security protocols and frequency filters Jon installed on all of the communicators.

Mentor quickly answered, "The Jet Propulsion Laboratories was a research and development center funded by the federal government. It was also a NASA field center. A primary function was the construction and operation of robotic planetary spacecraft. However, they also conducted other astronomy missions such as earth-orbit missions. It also operated NASA's Deep Space Network."

BEEP

The signal sounded again, but just as quickly as the signal was found, they lost it again. "We've still got interference," Hawk announced. "No way to check if it _is_ the real pass code."

"Captain!" Scout almost shouted from his post. "Sensors are showing that much larger storm is hitting the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles and stretching all the way to Los Alamos, New Mexico. All the storms we've been monitoring have united into a massive one. Intense thunder, violent lighting, it looks like several tornadoes have formed along the entire stretch. Temperatures have dropped drastically. That could be interfering with the signal."

"Keep monitoring, Scout," Jon told him.

"Working on it," Scout answered quickly. "This one came one hour after the previous one ended and... _what the hell?_"

All three men turned toward him. "What?" Jon asked.

"I just did a cross check on the atmosphere. Something really big is in this storm. I'm reading tachyon particles."

"Wait a minute," Hawk put up his hand to stop Scout. "Tachyons? I remember hearing something about those years ago when I guarded Stuart's lab. Aren't they just theoretical?"

"Tachyons?" Jon asked.

Tank was confused. "What are they?"

"Think time travel, big guy," Scout explained quickly. "A tachyon is a subatomic particle that moves faster than light. They were thought to be theoretical for years except for one thing - uh, what was his name? Professor Dillard, I think? Did some joint research with some labs back in the 2050's - Mentor, where did Dillard do those experiments?"

Without hesitation, Mentor answered, "At the Jet Propulsion Lab and Los Alamos in the mid-21st century—"

"Both?" Hawk quickly interjected. "That's at both ends of the storm, and the location for the old Jet Propulsion Laboratories location is where we're picking up this signal."

"Looks like," Scout agreed.

"Scout, how much do you know about tachyons?" Jon asked, his voice very steady.

Scout shrugged. "Not much. We lost all the data that was at those labs when Dread destroyed them. We've got a documentary about science fiction becoming science fact in our library files and Dillard's mentioned. He did a dual study to see if tachyons existed and to see if there was such a thing as time travel and if tachyons were involved in any way. Science fiction stories already connected the two, and it looks like there might some fact behind the fiction. Working at the JPL, Dillard tried to make a temporal/spatial connection between there and the Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico."

Mentor added, "That site was known as the facility for the Manhattan Project during World War II. In later times, the scientists were concerned with national security, outer space, renewable energy, medicine, nanotechnology and supercomputing during the 20th and early 21st century."

Hawk glanced back at Scout. "How many times did you watch this documentary?"

"More than once. After Dillard's experiments, they began to have a more serious interest in temporal physics and time travel. But here's the catch - Dillard couldn't prove the existence of tachyon particles back then. He couldn't track them; he couldn't get them to register on any type of equipment until he realized that since they were faster than light, he needed to look for what wasn't there. Sort of a trail where the energy had been shoved out of the way because the tachyons basically sped right past all the other particles. It was the absence of absolute proof that indicated there was something there and that's what really got the study of tachyons off the ground."

"And they're connected to time travel." That got Hawk's attention.

"Theoretically," Scout said. "Documentary didn't really say that anything was proven. But it's been used in a lot of science fiction TV shows and movies. I think it was scientists back in the early 20th century theorized they existed first."

"If they're theoretical, how can our sensors be reading them?" Hawk asked.

Scout cleared his throat. "After Jennifer and I watched the documentary a few times, she wondered if she could rig up the sensors to pick them up. She didn't really think they'd ever work, but she was curious. She built a highly sensitive sensor to try to pick up sub-atomic particles. I've been using that sensor to help track the storms." That was all he needed to say.

"Time travel… and Dillard did his dual study at both the Jet Propulsion and the Los Alamos facilities..." Jon began to say.

BEEP

Hawk glanced back down at the monitor. "We're receiving another signal. Same one. It's reading like it's from Jennifer's communicator."

Hawk might as well have been thinking out loud. They all knew what was going through his mind. They were thinking the same thing, but it was impossible. Time travel wasn't possible, and besides that, they had witnessed Jennifer's death. They watched her last moments on a vid-screen as she stood her ground against Blastarr. They heard her shout her defiance to a machine. They saw her take her last breath. It was a trap.

BEEP

BEEP

BEEP

The signal remained longer, its strength strong.

Scout rechecked the storm pattern. "Wind direction's changed. That might be letting that signal through to us."

Hawk quickly zeroed in on it. "Mentor, double-check it. Let's make sure -"

He didn't have to ask Mentor anything. He had the results in front of him. Good thing since they immediately lost the signal again due to the storms.

"Jon, the emergency signal… it's Jennifer's code. Definitely. It's the one you changed it to after Andy Jackson got past our defenses. It can't be duplicated. No one else had it; no one else knew it and the communicator was destroyed. And since the communicator is coded to our individual DNA, no one else could use it even if they had it."

Hawk glanced up at his friend. Jon's eyes were practically riveted at the signal frequency shown on the monitor. Jon knew it well – he'd designed it himself. Not only was it an emergency beacon, it transmitted a person's vital readings. Heart rate was fast, blood pressure was low, body temperature was falling slowly and whoever was holding the communicator was badly injured, in extraordinary pain and fading fast.

But if it was Jennifer… no, no one could consider the possibility. She was gone.

Yet they all knew one fact in particular - if someone was impersonating Jennifer, Jon would have no mercy on them.

"Gear up," Jon told them, his voice flat and angry. "Power on your suits. Let's find out who's trying to get our attention."

**~0~0~0~0~**

The jumpship, seemingly of its own volition, flew faster than specs allowed to the San Gabriel Valley area. The ship hadn't performed above spec in months, since before Christmas. Scout had repeatedly said that it was because the ship missed Jennifer, but the ship was an inanimate machine... right?

"_Hawk, what's going on?" Jon asked the moment he realized that the ship was flying quite steadily through intense turbulence._

"_No idea. It's like every system and circuit on board have gone into overdrive. It's like they're pushing past their limits on their own 'cause I'm not doing it. All the boards are in the green. No danger of overheating or short-circuits."_

No one would say it at that moment. No one would dare utter a sound, but they were all thinking the same thing - the jumpship believed that the signal was coming from Jennifer and was racing to reach her. Her pilot was calling for help, and no storm was going to get in the jumpship's way.

The ship landed smoothly in a torrential rainstorm. Smoothly. Without a hint of a rough touchdown.

"Not a word. Nobody say nothing," Hawk warned as they walked off the ship. "Let's just go." No, no one was going to say anything about the ship's performance. The ship didn't behave like that for anyone other than Jennifer. As accomplished a pilot as Hawk was, he didn't have the same connection with the jumpship as Jennifer did. The ship would fly for Hawk, but it would skydance for Jennifer.

It had skydanced all the way to the San Gabriel Valley despite the winds, the storms and falling temperatures.

Jon couldn't believe it. It was the Fourth of July, and the weather was _that _cold? In California? Unbelievable. It felt more like December in Colorado. The storm winds howled so loudly, the thunder boomed so explosively, the team had to yell in order to be heard over their communicators.

"How long has this storm been going on?" Tank yelled out.

Scout double-checked the readout. "Not quite twenty minutes. If it follows the pattern of the other storms, it'll die out in another forty minutes. What has me curious is how the entire line of storms joined up to make this one! Tachyon levels took a big rise and then got steady. Now they're dipping fast! Got no explanation!"

In full power suits, they walked through the torrential rain, following their scanners' readings toward the location of the signal. Their boots sank down to their ankles as they moved through the muddy sludge.

"It's starting to snow! Rain's coming down harder!" Scout called out. "And it's sleeting!"

"Snow? Here? In July?" Hawk looked up at his teammates as the flakes fell on his faceplate. "This is definitely one for the books."

A sudden gusting wind blew, first from one direction, then another. The team tried to lean into the wind to keep from falling over but kept losing their footing in the gales. It howled over their voices, and they shouted louder to be heard.

"Where's the signal coming from?" Jon yelled over the wind.

Scout paused to try to pinpoint the source. "Single vital sign just ahead, Captain. Readings are erratic. Sensors are showing this is the worst storm in a week!"

It was raining too hard to see much of anything. Walking side by side, maybe three feet apart so they could cover more ground and keep an eye on each other, they had to take small steps to navigate the muddy field.

"Temperatures are still dropping!" Hawk called back. Jon waved his hand in his direction to indicate he'd heard.

Scout checked another sensor. "It's the wind chill doing that! We're getting an uptick in the wind speed!"

Tank's foot caught on some half-buried foundation blocks. He couldn't counterbalance his weighty armor and tripped, landing right in the mud next to the blocks. Mud kicked up all over his suit.

"Careful, big guy," Scout called out. "Footing's pretty slick out here."

Tank looked back at them, made a move as if to signal he heard...

- _there was something lying beside the blocks._

Tank wasn't moving. He was staring at what was before him.

Hawk paused in mid-step. "Tank? You okay?"

Tank crawled back... pushed his visor up so he could see what was lying there and then he stopped moving altogether.

The others saw him, but they couldn't see what he was seeing. "What's that? Log? Broken foundation stone?" Hawk called out.

"No," Tank called back. It wasn't a fallen log... no... what was that? Blond hair? A khaki uniform? He reached down to double-check and –

- touched a _shoulder_ -

- pushed gently against the shoulder, the wet, blonde hair falling away from the _face_ -

It couldn't be.

He quickly powered down his suit so his hand was free of his armor and gently moved the hair away from the face -

"Captain!" He moved, tried to keep the rain from hitting her directly. "It's Jennifer!"

The others moved toward Tank, but it was Jon who reached him first. He knelt down and immediately but gently lifted Jennifer's head out of the mud. The falling rain rinsed the mud from her face. The gentle slope of her nose, the angle of her forehead - could there be any doubt?

"Scout!" Jon called out.

Scout pulled a sensor out of belt and scanned the woman Jon was holding. Every indicator was in the green. "It's Jennifer. There's no doubt!" he yelled over a crack of thunder. "There's a trace of tachyons... DNA reads that it's her! No sign of digitization. She's hurt bad! Like she said, she's all broken up inside. Ribs, lungs... it's serious. Everything checks out to be her! How?"

Hawk took her wrist and checked her pulse. "Definitely not good. We need to get her to a doctor. Jon -" Hawk pointed out the sleeve of her power suit. No one else could have worn the suit. It was geared to her specific DNA. He then picked up her wrist to check her wrist communicator. "It's the real thing," he muttered. "It's the suit you redesigned for her. There's no mistaking it."

"How is this possible?" Scout asked as he used every sensor to record any and all atmospheric data of the area. "She can't be here. I mean, tachyons? December weather in July? It can't be time travel. I can't believe it."

"Worry about that later," Jon ordered. "Tank, get the stretcher. I don't want to jostle her too much. And get blankets. She's cold, and it's getting colder out here. Hawk, get the ship ready. Kirkland's hospital in Montana's the closest."

Her vital signs were taking a serious dip. Jon shielded her from as much of the rain and sleet as he could while the others rushed back to the ship through the storm to get the stretcher and prepare for liftoff. He powered down his suit, reached out and took her hand with his own - no armor to get in the way. It was cold, but not deadly cold. Not yet. It was from being out in the weather. How could she be there, alive? Miles away from the base? He kept hearing her final words in his mind. _"I'm all broken up inside!" _She knew she was dying then. How could she be alive now?_ How could she be in California? _Could the tachyon particles be real? Could she have moved forward in time? Could the explosion have created some gateway that moved her in time? That sounded like science fiction.

A small voice echoed in his mind. Something about gift horses and mouths.

For once, he wanted to listen to the voice.


	3. Chapter 3

**Friday**

**July 5th, 2148**

**Resistance Base Hospital**

**Montana**

Moments.

Seconds.

Minutes.

Hours.

Time ticked off more slowly than Jon had ever known it to. The proverbial watched pot might never boil, but the focus of his watch was the door that led to the examination room. The more he watched, the longer it seemed that no one came out. People went in, but no one left. Something big was happening behind those doors. He didn't know what. Two surgeons had met them when they landed and whisked the stretcher and Jennifer away from him and behind those doors. A couple of med techs followed, closing the doors behind them. Then an anesthesiologist followed them. Supplies, bandages, blood and even a portable regenerator were rushed into the hospital room but they were hidden behind those doors. No one came out. No one told them anything.

He was beginning to hate the look of those doors.

He kept wondering when one of the doctors would tell him the woman was just someone who looked like Jennifer.

Then he hoped that they would come out and tell him it _was_ Jennifer.

During the entire flight to Montana, Jon sat beside the stretcher and couldn't stop looking at her. It was Jennifer. She looked like her. Unconscious, still breathing, warming up under the blankets as they flew at top speed toward Montana, it was Jennifer. It had to be.

Why wouldn't somebody come out of those blasted doors and tell him it _was_ her?

The waiting was intolerable. He checked his chronometer. It was past midnight. Fourth of July was over with. It was now July 5th. How many hours had they been there? How many more hours were going to pass before someone told them something?

He wasn't alone in his impatience. Hawk was pacing. He had been pacing since the first hour they arrived. No stopping, no resting, almost no change of pace. Tank was standing against the wall waiting, his gaze never leaving the examination room doors. Jon had seen him stare down biomechs, but this was a degree of concentration Jon had never seen Tank exhibit before. He was every bit on edge as the rest of them. Scout was trying to keep his mind on anything else by re-checking data, mumbling to himself about tachyons and punctual storms. He was transmitting directly with Mentor, organizing the data into some sort of coherent form. He was keeping himself busy, trying to keep his mind off worrying. Jon had never seen him that focused before.

They were all in the same condition - worried, scared and hopeful.

He noticed the occasional friend or acquaintance pass by the area. They would pause, look their way, motion to Jon that they were there to help if they were needed and then they would move on. Another friend met them when they landed. Elzer Pulaski, Freedom Two himself, was at the Montana base scrounging for some radio parts when the call came in that the Power Team was arriving with a medical emergency. He even helped carry the stretcher to the hospital area. He had walked by the medical area more than once. Cypher, the head of the Angel City resistance and Dennis T, the leader of the Idaho resistance had both made an appearance as soon as they heard. They had come to the base to scrounge for supplies and stayed after they found them to wait for news. Cypher had walked by several times already, but Dennis T only once. That didn't surprise Jon. Dennis T was always a bit of a loner, someone not comfortable in social settings and who associated little with other resistance groups outside of a battle, but he gave Jon a salute when he looked in at the medical center to let Jon know that his old friend was there and wishing them luck.

"How long's it been since we've seen Dennis T?" Hawk asked him as he paced by.

"A few years," Jon muttered. "He doesn't leave Idaho much. You know how he prefers to work alone with his team. I can respect that. They've got a great track record of keeping Dread out of Idaho, and they don't have to ask for help very often." When was the last time they had helped out Dennis T? Seven years earlier? No, ten? Regardless, whenever Jon had worked with him or talked with him, they always got along well, so the support was appreciated.

"That's odd," Scout suddenly said. "Captain, I'm looking over the data that's been collected over the last..." he checked his chronometer, "however many hours or so it's been. The storm that was raging when we found her, it only lasted an hour. There was an hour break and then another storm started."

Jon didn't see anything odd about that. "That's how the storms have been behaving for the last week, right?"

"Yeah, only it's not a massive one anymore. It's a series of storms again. Temps are bouncing back up to July normal between storms. The tachyons are gone, but the storms are still between the San Gabriel Valley and Los Alamos. Again. They're not moving in any direction. According to the data I've collected since we've been watching, the storms are happening on the same schedule. One hour on, one hour off, wind, rain, ranging temperatures. Before the big storm, they were increasing in strength. Now, they're _decreasing_ in strength."

Jon nodded, but he didn't care about the storms. Why would he - wait. Scout was talking to keep busy. It helped him deal with his concern. If his friend needed to do that, Jon could play along. Maybe it would help him deal with the tension. "Okay, the storms are weaker? And that's ... forget it." His brain wasn't working on a scientific level, but Scout's was and he'd found something he obviously thought was important. Time to act like a team leader collating information from his team. "Go over this again for me, will you, Scout? From the beginning?" His mind was definitely not on the storms they were investigating. He had other thoughts and concerns running through his mind.

Scout turned his scanner toward Jon. "One week ago, they started without any warning or any indications in the atmosphere. Gray skies one moment with absolutely no hint that a storm was coming, stormy skies the next. They grew in intensity for the last week, but that was a series of storms that stretched from San Gabriel to Los Alamos. And they didn't move. They stayed in that line all week. Today, uh, make that yesterday, all the storms became one giant storm stretching about 700 miles in length."

"From San Gabriel to Los Alamos?" Jon asked.

"Yes," Scout showed him a current reading of the atmosphere of the area. "Now, they've gone back to being a series of storms in the same area but they're finally weakening. Each session is slightly less powerful than the one before. Projections indicate they'll last for a week which is the same amount of time they were building. But here's the strange part. The tachyons we detected were _only_ present when the storms were united - when we found her. They weren't there before, and they weren't there after."

Jon thought for a moment. "And something like tachyons not being present before or after that particular storm would be a significant bit of data."

"It could be, Captain," Scout agreed. "I don't know."

Jon glanced at the doors again. Still, no movement from the other side.

Jon clasped his hands together. Talking about anything would get his mind off the waiting. "I know you're trying to figure all this out, Scout, but if it _is_ Jennifer, do you honestly think it could be time travel? It doesn't exist."

Scout stared at the computer. "The idea sounds like science fiction to me, but even Mentor can't rule it out even though it doesn't exist. I don't know how she could have been there in the same condition we knew her to be in when we saw her on the vid-screen. She had the same scar on her mouth, the scratches... but -"

"But?"

Scout considered his words. "Right now, we don't know if it is her. I mean, we have her DNA and sensor readings confirming it's her..."

Jon could tell that Scout was scared to think that it might not be Jennifer or worse, that it was her. Either way, he was worried. "We'll find out soon enough. Keep on going."

Scout took a deep breath. "If it is her, then I've got no idea how she got there, and I can't toss out any theory just because I think it's unbelievable and have no way to prove it. I've considered matter transference - perhaps Blastarr digitized her but the pattern was electronically transmitted to another site or server the moment the explosion happened and Soaron or Overmind reintegrated her. The thing is that I've had to rule out digitization because there's no physical evidence on the medical scans we took that indicates she was digitized. Plus, as far as we know, biodreads aren't using a system that lets them access each other's storage files without a physical download to a shared server. I can't make that theory hold water."

No, not as far as they knew, but they couldn't rule out that possibility, could they? Scout thought they could.

Jon began running through the obvious questions in his mind. He asked, "Some new type of technology Dread has that we don't know about?"

"Maybe, but I've got some doubts. Smart as he is, all the resources he's got, Dread doesn't have the scientific background or technology for some of this," Scout answered. "I mean, one hundred years ago, the idea that people could be digitized into files and stored on a hard drive was just fantasy. Artificial intelligence like Soaron and Blastarr? A world run by machines? A computer like Overmind? None of it existed in the form we know then, but it's here now. And then there are the tachyons. I can't ignore them. What if at some time in the future, time travel is possible? What if we're seeing the results of their experiments? Maybe the storms are a by-product of trying to break a time barrier? They started a week ago and grew in intensity until now when we find someone who shouldn't be there - actually be there - and now they're starting to decrease in strength, but they're in the same place. Why? Storms don't work like that. They move at some point or they dissipate. They're not this punctual or this geographically fixed."

Jon would not get his hopes up, but he had to do something. He talked. "An artificial storm maybe? A new weapon from Dread?" Jon had to consider all possibilities, right? Dread would be the obvious source of the storms, but even Jon had trouble believing that Dread had developed that type of technology.

Scout looked up at Jon, his forehead set in a confused frown. "That'd be scary if Dread could do something like that, but if he could, he'd have had to perform tests that we'd have picked up on by now. Captain, to us, time travel's not possible. But there were tachyons and as far as our theories go, tachyons are involved with time travel. Theoretically. Years from now? Who knows. They may have figured it all out. I do know what we saw and what we heard in December when Jennifer took down Blastarr. She didn't make it out. She couldn't have. She had to use the control panel to blow the power source, and it was instantaneous. So how can she be over 800 miles away from the old base months later in an area being pounded with tachyon particles?" He shut down his reader, then walked around the room to stretch his legs.

Jon blew out a breath. Scout couldn't connect the dots yet, but he wouldn't stop trying. Talking it out would be one way to help Scout deal with the tension. "All right, for the sake of conversation, let's assume that the tachyon particles indicate time travel. Someone snatched Jennifer from the blast before it killed her back at the base. Why? Wouldn't there have been tachyon particles present at the base? We went back there after the explosion to see what was left. There's nothing in the scans that showed anything like that, was there?"

Scout stopped walking and leaned against the wall. "Sensors didn't read anything like that back then, but there was so much for the sensors to pick up... I don't know. This isn't a scientific field I know anything about - other than a little history of it and what few bits of data we have from the documentary. As far as being a scientist, what I know, I've had to learn the hard way just like the rest of us. I can't test any of this, and this whole thing may be a red herring."

"Red herring?" Jon might have been amused by the archaic phrase if he wasn't as tense and scared as everyone else.

"I don't know, Captain. But we all saw her lying there hours ago. Scans said it was her. She was breathing, her heart was beating, and Dread doesn't have cloning technology. As far as we know, she didn't have a twin sister, but the one thing we know for certain is that she was wearing her power suit, the one you had to refit for her from a larger one since your father didn't make any that would have fit her. That wrist communicator is also DNA coded so it wouldn't work on anyone else. I don't have an answer. I'm just… hoping that what we think is impossible is true."

Hoping. That was the one thing Jon could do, but he wasn't sure what he was really hoping for.

"Jon," Hawk motioned toward the examination room door. Doctor Kirkland, a doctor who had helped them out on several occasions, one they knew they could trust, walked out and approached the group. The four men met her halfway.

"Well?" Hawk asked her.

The doctor frowned in confusion. "Every test I have proves it's Jennifer. DNA, cellular positioning, scars, retinal scans – it all matches. The surgical scar on her shoulder where I had to patch that knife wound she got a couple of years ago, the laser wound on her leg from the time all of you were ambushed on that mission to New York, even the belly wound from three years ago when she took on Soaron in hand-to-hand. Absolutely every physical marker I can test proves that it's her. There is one problem however."

"What?" Jon asked, his voice flat and low.

"I've only seen this in experiments we've run down in cryogenics. There's evidence that her cellular growth and regeneration was stalled or slowed down, perhaps stopped for a time. I can't be sure because the research is so new, but there's evidence that the timing of her cellular growth and cellular regeneration was altered in some way." Doctor Kirkland sounded absolutely surprised and not quite sure of herself. That didn't bode well for the team's concern.

Scout cleared his throat. "Do your tests show she wasn't digitized?"

"She wasn't," Kirkland answered. "There's no indication of that whatsoever."

"Could the evidence you're seeing indicate a time period?"

Doctor Kirkland nodded. "The cell structures are indicating a seven month lag from what it should be."

"You can be that accurate?" Scout asked her.

"In this case, I can." Doctor Kirkland handed Scout the printout of her results. "Normal cells grow at a particular rate. There are growth indicators within the cell itself. I've been one of your doctors for years, and I have test results for every single one of you. I know how fast you heal, your normal vital signs, the cellular rate of change, you name it. Jennifer was here after the meeting with Freedom One in November because she had a building fall on her, remember? I have the results of her cell tests I took then." She pointed out the particular data to Scout. "These are the cell tests now. There's only slight change, consistent with one month's growth. Her cells are not showing that they grew for the last seven months. They didn't change. They didn't alter. In fact, her cell structures look like they would have looked last December. We've only seen this cessation of cell change in our cryogenics lab when we freeze subjects for a time."

Jon glanced over at the data, seeing what Scout was reading. "But she wasn't cryogenically frozen," he mumbled.

"No," the doctor agreed. "There's absolutely no sign of her being frozen. Even that small amount of time she was outside before you found her can only be classified as a light case of exposure. It's almost as if the last seven months didn't exist for her. Like she… jumped ahead to July. And there's one more thing," she added.

All four men waited and listened.

"I compared the obvious injuries she exhibited on the recording of that conversation she had with you in December with her current injuries. The wounds match, and there's absolutely no sign of healing, and December was seven months ago."

Scout looked through more of the pages. "Could I have a copy of all this?"

Kirkland nodded as she handed Scout a data disk. "I thought you might need one. I'm guessing that something very strange is going on since she was to have died last December."

Jon was more than willing to let Scout sift through the science of whatever was going on. He had other plans. "Can we see her?"

"She's not conscious. We did emergency surgery. It wasn't pretty, I can tell you. I'll spare you the details for now. I'm sure your imaginations have been running rampant out here, but suffice it to say she had broken and bruised ribs, a punctured lung - look, guys, we'll go over all that later. She came through the surgery and spent the last five hours in the regenerator. I'm leaving her in the regenerator for a while longer. Her wounds are healing up nicely. Don't try to wake her up yet. I want her to sleep as long as she can, but it'll be all right if one of you goes in for just a few minutes."

Hawk slapped Jon on the shoulder. There was no need to say who was going through those doors.

Jon followed Doctor Kirkland into the examination room that was also an emergency hospital room. One room for everything – examination, surgery, recuperation, all of it behind those blasted doors Jon couldn't stand to look at anymore. Just inside the room, Jon stopped as soon as he saw her. Pale, bruised, her eyes slightly squeezed in pain, a nasal canula, multiple machines monitoring her; she almost didn't look like herself.

But it _was_ Jennifer. She had to be, right?

He stepped further into the room. The life-monitoring machines echoed lowly against the walls, but their very presence made everything seem worse than it was. Jon reached the bed and looked at her. It was Jennifer. There was no doubt about that. Right under her chin was the small scar she got that day when she protected Pulaski from the falling wall when Blastarr fired at them. He was the only person besides Jennifer that knew it was there. She had mentioned it in passing…

"_Chin hurt?" Jon asked as he held the hull plate in place as Jennifer welded the new piece on the jumpship._

"_A little. Why?" she asked as she inspected the weld seam._

"_You touch it every now and then like it was bothering you."_

_Jennifer glanced at him for a moment. "I do? I think it got hit when the wall fell on us," she told him. _

_She climbed the ladder to weld the upper seam, and Jon could see the underside of her chin. It was bruised, and there was a small cut in the wound._

Nothing of significance. Nothing of note. Just a bruise and a cut that no one would ever notice and wouldn't bother her again once it was all healed up.

But it was more proof.

There were new scars and burns that were now treated, proof that she had survived that inferno – but had she truly been in it? How did she get to California from Colorado seven months after the explosion unless…

No, no more speculations. Not yet. Other things were more important at that moment. "Is she in any pain?" he asked the doctor.

"None of the monitors are showing any indication of severe pain, but I think she's hurting a little. She's unconscious, but she's not in a coma. We're going to keep her sedated until tomorrow and then if her numbers are good enough, we'll take her off sedation to see how she responds. It's okay to talk to her and let her know you're here. I'll be just outside."

Once the doctor left, Jon reached out and carefully touched Jennifer's hand. She wasn't cold anymore. Thin fingers, small wrist. He knew that hand. He'd seen it hold a spanner how many times? Watched her effortlessly switch out circuits, her fingers moving so fast, he couldn't follow them? He would sit in the captain's chair on the jumpship, utterly amazed how her slightest touch brought the ship under her complete control. Then something else grabbed his attention. There, just above the wrist was a small scar she got when that biomech grabbed her on the road to Eden, when she amusingly announced that she didn't like grabby robots.

It was her.

It was truly her.

_How?_

He sat there, stunned, almost wishing that he was back in those interminably long moments out in the hallway waiting for news. Now, knowing that it was Jennifer, what was the next step? An imposter, he could deal with. A trap, he could deal with. Jennifer? He had absolutely no idea what to do. He had no idea what to say. He felt like his heart was in his throat. Everything he'd felt since December, all the anger, all the loneliness, all the regret came burbling up to the surface. Anger - that was the worst of it. Dread had stolen time from them. He had taken Jennifer away from him. Jon had taken that anger and focused it all on Dread for killing Jennifer, and now...

"Hey there," he finally whispered. "I don't know if you can hear me, but I'm here. I'll be here. Hawk, Scout and Tank are just outside too." He glanced up at the monitors. There was no change, no indication that she heard him. "We don't know what's happened. You've been gone. We thought you were gone, but now you're here. I just... maybe you can help us figure things out when you wake up." He gently squeezed her fingers. Maybe she could feel him? "You need to wake up. You need to be all right. I don't know if I can handle you not being all right after you being gone." He glanced at his chronometer. Time was moving quickly. "They won't let me stay long. They want you to sleep and get well. Doctor Kirkland said they'll keep you sedated until tomorrow, so we can talk later. And we need to talk. We need to have that talk we didn't get a chance to have at Christmas."

He just didn't know what to say or how to say it. What do you say to someone you thought was dead for seven months only to find them alive?

He heard a noise behind him, and he turned to see Doctor Kirkland walk back in. She glanced at him and then said, "It really is her, Jon."

He looked back at the unconscious woman, absolutely no doubt in his mind. "I know. I just don't know how it could be."

**~0~0~0~0~**

"She's alive," Hawk muttered. "She's back."

Tank stood there, his arms crossed. "How? We saw her die. How could she be alive and here?"

No one wanted to speculate. No one wanted to guess. No one wanted to question. If they did, then maybe it would stop being real and they would lose her again because it would turn into a dream.

"However she's back, we'll figure it out," Scout vowed, "but I do know one thing for certain."

Hawk frowned at his friend. Was something else wrong? "What's that?"

"Next time we talk about our best Fourth of Julys, we can say it was in 2148."


	4. Chapter 4

**Thursday**

**March 21st, 2357**

**Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico **

Living inside what was, in essence, a temporal bubble had its drawbacks. The scientists, researchers, maintenance techs and support staff and their families living under the domes weren't affected by changes to the timelines. They could remember each timeline as it changed or as it was altered, so they alone were the true recorders of the planet's history.

Temporal theories, temporal laws, temporal discrepancies, temporal anomalies – and the temporal physicists were still just beginning to understand how the time/space/history continuum actually worked. There was a rule: do not interfere with human history. Changing one thing in the past could be devastating to anything in the future. However, if someone else 'changed' the past, then the Temporal Administrative Council was duty-bound to correct it. That was the extent of their 'changes' to the timeline. Usually.

It seemed like a simple premise. A discrepancy would be detected. The source would be researched. The various timelines would be categorized and cataloged. Then, if it was possible, the exact moment in time that was changed would be reset to its original parameters.

One such moment was the not-meant-to-happen death of Doctor Stuart Power on June 14th in 2132, 225 years earlier.

Professor Jillian Barrett watched the wave converter as the timelines coalesced into a single wave, but it wasn't right. The wave was still erratic, not pulsing calmly in a steady tempo.

Immediately, her communicator dinged for her attention. The identification system showed that it was her partner at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She switched on the communicator to answer. "Delphi? Are you getting this? I'm still reading an anomaly. Please tell me it worked. Did everything get reset?"

There was a pause. "_No. We've got problems. The wave splittered._ _And it looks like we hit more than the target date_." Aderholdt's voice sounded very under-caffeinated.

"How many cups of coffee have you had, Delphi?"

"_I'm making another pot as we speak."_

"That won't be enough, not for you," Jillian sighed. Making the target date had been a long shot to begin with. 2132 was further in the past than they had ever tried to reach. Moving something safely through time? Still experimental. The science was still in its infancy, so exact, easy accuracy was still some time away. "How close were we?"

Again, another pause. Finally, her partner answered, "_We're getting the first indications of the temporal changes. Like I said, the wave splittered into two. On one wave fractal,_ _we think we were able to get Doctor Power out of Volcania just before it blew up."_

"Wait, a wave fractal shouldn't have been strong enough to move someone," Jillian argued. "He should have deconvoluted."

"_Should have but didn't," _Delphi continued._ "We think a certain blast distorted our time wave connection. We have no idea where he may have been transferred to yet. We're waiting for changes in the time line to reach us to try to figure out when he got sent._"

Blast distortion? Splittered beam? Oh, that was _not_ good news. "Did our secondary experiment have anything to do with this?"

"_It couldn't. It wasn't anywhere near the target date when we sent the beam back,"_ Delphi assured her.

"How far off the original time track might we be?"

"_For Power? Days? Years? Who knows. He could have been sent back to the age of the dinosaurs for all we know or he's sitting in Paris talking to Benjamin Franklin or maybe talking to Leonardo Da Vinci. Scite it, he may have ended up in Provence and told Nostradamus what to write in his quatrains."_

The sound of the coffee pot sputtering out the last of the water indicated that the pot had finished brewing. Jillian understood her partner's need for coffee. She had a feeling she'd be ingesting a few pots of the liquid energy herself before this problem was fixed. "You said the beam splittered in two?"

"_That's not the worst part,"_ Delphi took a sip of coffee. Jillian could hear her utter an expletive - she must have drained the cup quickly and then there was the unmistakable sound of her partner pouring another cup. _"The second wave fractal followed the same trackers and anchored to the Power Base. December. 2147."_

Jillian Barrett was many things, and a war history enthusiast was one of them. "December of 2147? The destruction of Blastarr and the Power Base? Corporal Jennifer Chase destroyed them? That's the place where the second wave fractal ended up?"

"_From what we've been able to trace, yes,"_ Delphi explained. _"That's the blast we think flowed through the fractals and gave them the strength enough to move two people instead of just deconvoluting them."_

"How could that have happened? We checked every bit of information before we started this experiment," she complained. "Did the Cyclotron fail in any way?"

"_Jillian, prepare to get angry. We're waiting on the equipment status reports, but there's no evidence yet it was the Cyclotron. Looks like it was the Brophy Theorem. We proved it."_

The Brophy Theorem? Two similar events looking the same from another point in time… "The Power Base explosion was the secondary event?"

"_It was. After the timeline changed when Stuart Power was killed, one of the events that was different was the last moments of Corporal Chase's life. In the altered timeline, Captain Power was speaking to her over a vid-link at that moment and Major Masterson was listening as well. Since we used Power and Masterson as a means of temporal trackers –"_

"Yeah, got it. Same people, similar events, the time beam pretty much splittered because it didn't know which one to hit." Jillian Barrett could sense her friend's frustration. She felt it too. "Where did we move her to?"

"_Looks like Chase was transferred to one of JPL's test sites some time in 2148. The algorithm's showing our time signature but not the geographic location. We're trying to pinpoint her now. I'm hoping that we'll locate Stuart Power before we get any information on her. If we can correct his timeline after removing him in 2132, then that could correct the Chase anomaly created by the splittered time wave. The actual timeline might correct itself automatically, and it'd be as if nothing different happened to Chase. She'd die in the explosion at the Power Base like she was supposed to."_

Jillian had known Delphi for years. She also knew that brainstorming and speculating out loud was a way she would work through problems. Jillian was beginning to think that Delphi had more than a few ideas already. "Where do you think Power could have ended up?"

"_Almost anywhere or anywhen,"_ Delphi answered

"Delphi, come on, this is me. I know you. Don't dodge. What's your gut telling you?"

"_Something scary. I haven't even talked to Elias about it but he may be thinking the same thing. It came to me just as I was calling you. We know that the two wave fractals were a split of a single temporal beam. We preprogrammed the temporal beam to return Power to a particular set of temporal coordinates the day following the Volcania explosion. Since we know that both wave fractals would have the same preprogramming, that they were split from a single beam, then the relocation point should be the same. Only it wasn't. He didn't show up 24 hours later. That much we know. Jennifer Chase was sent somewhere in 2148, not 2132. If the energy powering the relocation was strong enough, then maybe Power was sent to that year as well, just maybe not to the same geographic location. Until the time line stabilizes and the changes are recorded, we won't know where or when he is."_

Power sent to a 2148 test site like Chase had been? Jillian mentally processed the data. What shouldn't have happened did. "We've got hundreds of test sites geographically, but none of them coincide temporally with 2148. We haven't done any time tests back to that year before now."

"_We haven't, no, but who knows what temporal scientists have done in the future. Maybe there's some sort of backlash down the time stream from this mangled experiment that makes 2148 a year a time test was performed in by our successors?"_

Jillian just shook her head. The many ways the future could go were too much for one lone scientist to contemplate. "Can we use another time beam to try to locate them?"

"_Not at this time. Disturbance is too bad right now."_

"What kind of disturbances are you reading?"

"_Spatial and temporal interference has affected the time/wave generator's ability to reach into the past and remain locked on a specific point."_

Jillian took a deep breath. That was science-speak for 'we don't know how to fix what went wrong yet because we have no direct knowledge of where the specific targets are so all we can do is wait around and twiddle our thumbs.'

Both scientists hated twiddling their thumbs.

"If Power was transferred to 2148, is that too far after the appearance of Dread to do us any good? Without Stuart Power to run the Power Base, then the entire dynamic of the Power Team changes! This is not good news."

"_No, it isn't_," her partner told her. "_But there's nothing we can do about it as yet_."

Jillian considered the news. "Okay, we're stalled on Power. What about Chase? Historians agree that her death is what turned the tide of the war substantially against Dread and the Machine Empire. If she survived –"

"_It's believed that she was fatally wounded at the end of that battle. Even though her physical and temporal location was moved forward, she shouldn't survive long if she truly was injured. Maybe fifteen minutes at best, but she'd be unconscious after just a few minutes if our information about her injuries is in any way correct."_

Again, Jillian considered the history of the subject. "On the original timeline, no one knows for certain what happened to her during that battle. Not us now, not them then. It's pure speculation that she fought Blastarr and was wounded in a vain attempt to protect the Power Base. There was no contact between her and the rest of the Power Team. They didn't even know the base had blown up until they got the download of Mentor's personality matrix and he told them about the infiltration. We don't know if Blastarr killed her long before the explosion or if she was captured. It's one of the greatest mysteries of the Badderdays and everyone thinks they know what happened. It's a story about a hero's last stand. But if she was alive and well..."

"_Then we changed history for the worst because she would be alive when she was moved through time,"_ Delphi sighed. _"I know, Jillian. I've been kicking myself ever since this happened."_

Jillian shook her head. "It wasn't your fault, Delphi. No one has ever been able to prove the Brophy Theorem. It was a completely unexpected event." She began to gear up all her remaining computers to track any and all anomalies. "Okay, we can't do anything until the timeline stabilizes and we know where everyone is. I'll help keep an eye on things as well. Maybe between you, me and Elias, we can figure out what to do next."

"_I've already started writing up my part of the preliminary report. I'll send it to you if you want to add anything before we send it on to the Council. I'll also send a copy to the Cyclotron Lab so they can run more checks on their equipment."_

Right, a report. The Administrative Council would want to know everything even if it was preliminary. "Send it to me. I'll take a look. And Delphi?"

"_Yeah?"_

"Get another pot of coffee brewing. You're going to need it."

**~0~0~0~0~**

**Thursday**

**March 21st, 2357**

**Cyclotron Laboratories**

At first, William Custer didn't bother reading the entire report. He just skimmed through the summary.

The 'rescue' time beam went to 2132, splittered in mid-transmission. One fractal went to 2132 and took Stuart Power, but he was missing in time. The other fractal went to 2147 and took Corporal Jennifer Chase from the Power Base, and she was somewhere in 2148. A possible power surge from the Power Base explosion may have strengthened the fractals. Accurate readings were not possible until the timeline disturbance calmed down. Both were still lost.

Custer was the first at his lab to see the report. It was part of his job to disseminate such information pertaining to the working of the Cyclotron to the proper personnel. He read through the actual report, dismissing the summary. The main detail had worked out as he'd planned but so much had happened that he hadn't accounted for. Chase? A nuisance, but not an insurmountable problem. Others could deal with that. He needed to determine a way to find Stuart Power before anyone else did. One thing he couldn't do was alter the report. There were too many copies circulating through the other laboratories. Any difference would be noticed.

Custer delivered the preliminary report of the 'event' to his superiors' offices, his anger kept secret. He briefed them, as was his job. He pointed out the key areas to read in the report, again, as per his job. His bosses nodded and thanked him and then dismissed him.

When the timeline changed to his satisfaction, no one would ever dismiss him again.

He turned his detailed mind to the plan. It had been a simple plan! Make certain Stuart Power died in 2132. That was easy enough. Now, according to the preliminary report, Aderholdt and Barrett were working the problem as thought they believed he was alive? Just lost in time? Could he be alive? Did their 'rescue' time wave get to Power before Custer's time wave reached back in time to kill him? All the reports indicated that Power was moved, but could they have moved a corpse? They were hoping that was what Chase was when she reached her landing time.

But how did a fractal wave actually _move_ him through time? It should have been too weak even with a power boost from the Power base explosion. And where was Power? When was he?

So far, Custer's colleagues were blaming the problems on the Brophy Theorem. That was good. It was just as he planned. No one even suspected that he was the reason Stuart Power was in danger in the first place. If he could just eliminate Power from time itself after the explosion, then his plan could continue. What was that old saying? Everything else was just gravy? He'd have to literally move him with a time wave, but that would have to wait until they were allowed to power up the Cyclotron again in order to mask his personal agenda. He would be able to hide his experiments among the official searches and hide all evidence of what he was doing in the paperwork and reports. No one would know what he was doing. So all he had to do first was find Stuart Power and have his time wave program ready to run when the other labs decided to power up the Cyclotron in an effort to rescue him again once they found him. His time wave could piggyback on theirs and Custer would make certain that it reached Power first and killed him. He'd make sure of that.

Still, he had to behave like everyone else. Concerned, tense, worried, scared - he mimicked everyone else's behavior and drew no attention to himself. Obscure, as usual, but not for much longer.

He walked into the break room and poured himself a cup of coffee. The general hubbub and conversation concerned the same topic. He nodded hello to some of his co-workers, looked over some maintenance paperwork a few other cyclotechs asked his opinion about, informed them that all the maintenance records were within specs, found some snacks -

"Doctor Custer?"

William turned toward one of his associates as he walked over to join him. "Doctor Bareilles, what can I do for you?"

"Nothing, nothing, I was just wondering if any new information about the situation has come from JPL or Los Alamos in the last few minutes." There was a sudden cessation of conversation around them.

Ah, the situation. No one was calling it what it was - a clusterdreck. Custer cleared his voice. "No, I haven't heard of any new developments beyond the preliminary report sent by Aderholdt and Barrett. Right now, current information holds that Doctor Stuart Power was in danger and was moved through time but there was a Brophy Theorem anomaly that took place. I understand Aderholdt and Barrett are working the problem and are keeping us apprised of the situation as it develops."

Bareilles nodded his head. "Good. If they can't repair the problem, I'd hate to think of the ramifications. Imagine... without Stuart Power, Dread wouldn't have been stopped."

"The Taggarts would have been the ruling family for generations as the only prominent family of their time," Custer added.

"Dread would have at least, and what a nightmare that would have been," Bareilles commented. "Are the other labs asking any help from us?"

"Cursory," Custer answered quickly. "I've run every diagnostic available on the equipment. That includes all the specific ones I could think of as well as any indicated through the JPL and Los Alamos' preliminary report before we even received it. My monitoring team is continuing with diagnostics on systems that have nothing to do with the temporal experiments in case a program may have been hidden in a non-essential file."

"Proactive, running the diagnostics before even being asked. Good idea," Bareilles praised him.

"I didn't want to leave anything to chance with an experiment of this importance," Custer continued. "The Cyclotron's performance was flawless. Everything was in spec. Nothing out of sync. Once the first run diagnostics are completed, I'll have my team re-run all the tests just in case something was missed, but we'll add the first run essential diagnostic results to the preliminary report that will be forwarded to the Temporal Administrative Council as well as JPL and Los Alamos. It is possible that the problem may have been merely the Brophy Theorem without any cause on anyone's end."

Bareilles ran his hand through his hair. "If that's the case, then we could be in real trouble. Have they asked for any other assistance?"

"None at the moment," Custer explained. "I'm assuming that until a correction is determined by the Council, we won't be hearing anything more from either JPL or Los Alamos."

And that would be fine with him. If he could somehow find Stuart Power first through the timeline changes, then his family would be dominant once again and then all his troubles would be over.

He didn't care if the world's troubles were beginning.

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Saturday**

**July 6th, 2148**

**Resistance Base Hospital**

**Early Morning**

Rumors were like weeds. They grew like wildfire. The news that Corporal Jennifer Chase was alive and well and at a Resistance hospital had been circulated to practically every Resistance group in the area in less than two days. It wouldn't take long for the story to filter around to other groups. The story of how she had fought Blastarr until the end, how she had given up her own life to stop him and keep the Resistance a going concern was known to everyone. It had become one of the heroic stories being told around campfires time and again. It wasn't just the defeat of a biodread and the sacrifice of a brave soldier. It was an ages-old story of how one stood against many, how one single soldier could hold off an armada. There were some heroes out there - Resistance soldiers like the Power Team - who risked everything daily to stop an overwhelming evil, but for one soldier to do what Jennifer Chase did? It let people know that bravery didn't just lie with the teams or the groups. Bravery still lived in the heart and soul of a single individual, and one person could make a profound difference.

That kind of belief had been slowly dwindling as Dread's machines menaced the world, as people saw their hopes of survival destroyed bit by bit every day.

The moment people heard that Jennifer Chase was found alive, the speculations began. The wild stories and assumptions and theories about what had really happened to her started spreading faster than the rumors that she was back. She'd been captured, she'd been digitized, she had escaped but was lost in the wastelands after the explosion - each story growing more fantastic than the previous one. No one could learn the truth.

Doctor Kirkland used her authority at the hospital to keep Jennifer safe from prying eyes, and no one other than the Power Team was allowed in the area where Jennifer Chase was. Besides, four very worried soldiers sitting vigil in the hallway? Camping out in that small section waiting for the merest word of her condition? They weren't in the mood to deal with rumormongers. Doctor Kirkland placed guards around the area but out of the team's way to help keep the area clear. People could only pass by to try to get some new tidbit of information.

All anyone could do was wait.

She looked at her chrono. She needed to check on Jennifer again. She gathered up Jennifer's file and was about to walk toward her hospital room when she was stopped.

"So we hear you've got some good rumors floating around," a voice said lowly from behind her.

Kirkland turned to see some old friends approaching her. Dennis T led Elzer Pulaski and Cypher toward her. "Well, well, Dennis T. You're a long way from your base although there's not much left in Idaho to go sight-seeing for," she teased him as she hugged him hello. She had known Dennis T for a lot of years. They'd been good friends before he joined the Idaho Resistance and still maintained a friendly relationship. They'd been through a lot of battles and aftermaths together until he moved to his Idaho base. She didn't get to see him often, so it was a rare treat when he came to the Montana base.

"Me and Cypher were here scrounging for some supplies when we ran into Elzer. He told us about meeting the jumpship when it landed and that they had their pilot with them. We've been waiting around for some news."

"Does Jon know you're here?" Kirkland asked them.

"We've passed by a few times since she was brought in," Cypher explained. "I have, anyway. I think Dennis T only made one walk by the corridor."

"How's Jennifer doing?" Elzer asked her.

Kirkland nodded, still amused that Elzer was one of the few outside the Power Team that would call Jennifer by her first name. In fact, he would get a wistful look in his eyes when he talked about her. Maybe that idea Kirkland had that Elzer had a crush on Jennifer was true? She would find out someday. She pointed down the hallway. From their standpoint, they could see Power, Hawk, Tank, and Scout sitting in chairs in the hallway outside a single room. "Well guarded, still alive and there's a good prognosis."

Cypher crossed his arms as he gazed at the team as if to brace himself if the news wasn't good. "How is she alive? From what we heard -"

"No idea," Kirkland readily agreed. "They're still trying to figure that out."

Dennis T shook his head. "Five strong again. That'll give Lyman problems. That team was always stronger with the five of them."

Elzer took a glance at his friend. "Lyman? You call Dread by his first name?"

Dennis T gave a little smirk. "I always did. Why stop now?" he asked, a mysterious look to him.

Kirkland knew that Dennis T was always a mystery to most people because there was something obscure about him. He didn't talk about his personal life before the wars. What was known about him was that he was a Resistance cell leader, fairly successful at the job, but he was almost famous for being able to avoid Dread's soldiers in a way that made people think he was psychic because he could almost guess at what Dread was going to do. Being obscure and mysterious had given him an edge most other Resistance leaders didn't have. She never saw the need to tell anyone any information she knew about him. If he wanted to keep his secrets secret, then she wouldn't say a word.

"Hope this doesn't stop Jon from destroying Lyman," Dennis T muttered. "It was losing the pilot that tipped the scales in our favor some months ago."

"You noticed that, huh?" Cypher inquired. "It was always pretty obvious that there was something between them if you ever saw them together."

"Didn't notice it personally," Dennis T explained quickly. "I've never met her. I've only heard a few rumors and saw the results. I knew Jon when he was a boy, haven't seen too much of him these last fifteen years. But just losing a single teammate wouldn't have affected him like that unless there was something more there."

Cypher nodded. "You're right. It wasn't just any team member. It was _her_."

**~0~0~0~0~**

Doctor Kirkland walked quietly toward Jennifer's room. She watched the team as she moved closer to them. Scout and Hawk were sitting against the wall finally getting a little sleep, but they were dozing fitfully. _Probably just a catnap, huh, guys? _Tank was sitting in a chair opposite the hospital room. His eyes were closed but Kirkland had no doubt that he was completely alert even if he wasn't wide awake. Jon was studying some information about the recent storms in the southwest on Scout's reader. Doctor Kirkland had no idea what he was looking for, but even she knew the storms were behaving strangely. The stray thought that it was a new weapon Dread wielded crossed her mind. The last thing she wanted to hear was that Dread had control of the weather. If he did, then that would mean the end of the human race. Dread would be able to create droughts, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, anything that could wreak mass destruction. He could literally level the continent.

Jon glanced up at her as she walked past, and she gave him a quick placating wave of her hand before she went into Jennifer's room. She needed to examine her patient before she talked to the rest of the team.

The room was mostly dark with only the lights from the monitors illuminating the area. Kirkland checked the monitors... yes, everything was looking good. Jennifer's numbers were improving. Sedation... seemed to be wearing off. She'd keep Jennifer on a light dose of painkillers for a day or two more. Everything should be all right if luck was with them.

Luck brought her back, so maybe it'd hang around just a little longer and give her back to them hale and hearty.

"How is she?" a whisper sounded behind her.

Kirkland turned around and saw four curious faces crowding the doorway. "Much better," that was a truthful answer. "She's improving."

The team walked into the room, all four looking at their fallen teammate.

"I've got to tell you that news of her return is spreading. Dennis T, Cypher and Elzer Pulaski were here a few minutes ago asking about her," she told them.

"Dennis T?" Scout asked.

Jon moved around the bed and sat down in the chair. "Yeah, last time we worked with him was before you and Tank joined the team. He leads the Resistance cell in Idaho. He knew Dread years ago and knows how he operates better than anyone else in the Resistance."

"So we've never worked with him," Tank said. "I don't remember ever hearing of him."

"No, you probably wouldn't have," Hawk answered quickly. "Dennis T belonged to a once prominent family, but they had different politics. He took his money out of the banks, withdrew his support from a lot of their causes, spoke out against them, basically distanced himself as far as he could when they sided with the Machines. He still feels guilty about what he didn't do to stop Dread years ago, and he thinks if he had acted, then maybe Dread wouldn't be here and a lot of people would still be alive. He keeps a low profile, but he has one of the best records in the Resistance."

"Sounds like you know him pretty well," Scout observed.

"A little, years ago. I met him a few times back when Dread and Stuart were partners, before the big linkup with Overmind. Now, he just likes to do his job in relative obscurity."

There was a silence as the men gazed at their fallen teammate.

"Will she wake up soon?" Scout asked.

Kirkland shrugged. "That's up to her. Given her numbers, it shouldn't be too long. Still, she's been through a lot. Sleep's the best thing for her." The team had frowns, even in the face of good news. They were worried. Maybe she could do something for them. "Guys, there's really nothing any of you can do right now but worry. Tell you what, how about I get some beds for all of you so you can get some real sleep?"

"No thanks, doc," Hawk said. "We'd rather worry, but we appreciate the offer."

She didn't expect anything else from them. Yet one look at the four very tired men told her that they wouldn't be awake much longer. "Okay, then we'll make a deal. Three of you can get some sleep and one of you can sit in here with her. But only one. I don't want a crowd. You guys can take turns. How's that?"

Luckily, she didn't get an argument.

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Thursday**

**March 21st, 2357**

**Temporal Administration Headquarters**

_PRELIMINARY STATUS REPORT SUMMARY_

_To: Temporal Administrative Council_

_Administrator Eileen Collier _

_Professor Edward Reichardt _

_Doctor Diane Stabler _

_Councilor Arthur Reutiman _

_Councilor Ernest Bryan _

_Professor Sonja Edgars_

_Councilor Arthur Fowler_

_From: Doctor Philadelphia Aderholdt, JPL; _

_Doctor Elias Pitcairn, JPL;_

_Professor Jillian Barrett, Los Alamos_

_Status: Ongoing_

_Regarding: Attempted temporal correction of altered timeline. _

_Focus: Doctor Stuart Power, circa June 14th, 2132_

_Research in response to the sudden change in the timeline originating on June 14, 2132. _

_Indicators state that Doctor Stuart Power was terminated in the explosion occurring at Volcania at the above stated temporal coordinates. The correct timeline holds that Doctor Stuart Power survived and led the Power Team from the Power Base after his escape on that date. _

_In an effort to correct the timeline, a temporal beam was sent to the specified temporal coordinates to remove Doctor Power and place him at another location on June 15, 2132. The temporal/spatial coordinates of Doctor Power's location were determined by triangulating the tracker locations of Doctor Stuart Power, his son Jonathan Power and Major Matt Masterson along with the known event of the Volcania explosion. Due to the unforeseen occurrence of the Brophy Theorem, a similar event occurred on the changed timeline (see addendum: Power Base explosion, circa 2147). With similar events and the same tracker units used, the time wave splittered. Each wave fractal focused on a particular event. Current theory is that the Power Base explosion traveled through the time wave, giving the fractals enough power to move the targets temporally instead of deconvoluting them. Doctor Stuart Power was removed from Volcania and transported to an unknown location, site yet to be determined. Corporal Jennifer Chase was removed from the Power Base prior to the explosion on December 25th, 2147, and moved to the year 2148 to an as yet undetermined JPL temporal test site. Search is ongoing to verify location and status of both individuals._

_Cyclotron Diagnostic reports performed by Doctor William Custer attached. All reports indicate proper equipment functions._

"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where we stand at the moment," Administrator Eileen Collier said after reading the preliminary report to her associates on the Council.

"The Cyclotron Laboratories' report states that the equipment was working well within set parameters without any energy spikes. Without evidence to the contrary, it looks like they proved the Brophy Theorem," Councilor Bryan said, his voice indicating his disbelief. "Definitely not a serendipitous moment. Didn't they check the altered timeline to see if an identical set of trackers events existed prior to sending the time wave back?"

Professor Edgars shook her head. "Don't go there, Ernie. You know Delphi Aderholdt and Jillian Barrett as well as the rest of us. They don't do half-scited work. And let's face it, Pitcairn may be a bit of a scientific rebel at times - that's the only way he could get along with someone as hyper and innovative as Delphi - but he wouldn't sneeze if the numbers weren't right. They checked and rechecked their data before sending back that time beam. Diagnostics were run on the Cyclotron before the experiment even began and everything was in perfect working order. Whatever happened was a complete surprise to them. Maybe something kept them from discovering that there was a secondary event."

Councilor Fowler had to agree. "They're too good at their jobs. This was something completely unexpected. However, unexpected or not, it does present a problem. Jennifer Chase is alive as far as we know. We may have to deal with that. If she lives, we cease to exist as a civilization."

"That's all carts before horses," Collier stated. "Until we know exactly what's going on, I don't want to jump to conclusions. I do want all of you thinking about best-case and worst-case scenarios. We may have to make some decisions if things go bad."

"It's sad," Edgars agreed. "History tells us that Corporal Chase was a very good, unique individual who deserved a much better life than she got. Some of the stories say that risked her life time and again to save civilians."

Reutiman yawned. "It's all fairy tales, Sonja. Unfortunately, not everyone can have a happy ending. Some people have to go without for the betterment of the rest of the world. Her life, while short, was productive and memorable but it was her death that allowed all of us to exist in a free society. I'm not willing to give that up, are you?"

Diane Stabler said in a low voice, "Who would have thought that one of the good guys being alive would be a bad thing."


	5. Chapter 5

**Saturday**

**July 6th, 2148**

**Resistance Hospital**

**Late Afternoon**

Her numbers were better.

Her breathing was even.

Her heart rate was normal.

Everything was pointing to the fact that she was alive and well and back.

Jon sat in the chair next to the bed and just watched Jennifer as she slept.

The very fact she was lying there _sleeping_ was diametrically opposed to logical argument. She was gone. Dead. She was someplace beyond his reach and he'd never see her again. He'd accepted that fact months earlier, but he refused to let her death go unavenged. He was angry that the war had ripped her away from him, and he took that anger out on everything that Dread owned. Jon destroyed manufacturing facilities, biomech repair labs, food processing plants, Dread Youth training areas, geothermal power plants, communications hubs, absolutely anything related to Dread in any way. He had no mercy for Dread, not anymore. Whatever had been left of Lyman Taggart had died, probably years earlier. For whatever reason, Jon had always felt he had an obligation to try to reach his dad's old friend, that maybe something of Lyman Taggart still survived, but when Jennifer died, all obligations to salvage Taggart died. Jon's obligation changed. Now, Jonathan Power destroyed everything, and he reveled silently in his victories.

He knew he worried Hawk. How many times over the last seven months had he tried to talk to Jon? Try to help him talk out his anger and his grief? But if he had, then yes, Jon would have been the better for it, but the war wouldn't have been. Losing Jennifer had opened Jon's eyes to a lot he'd tried to push away. No more. No more would he push away the anger, the despair, and the utter destruction of everything around him. Without her, he'd lost his hope. When he lost his hope, he lost his idealism. Without idealism, there was no reason to pull his punches. He wrecked everything Dreadish in sight.

But now, Jennifer was back, lying in the hospital bed, _sleeping_.

What had he become?

What would she think of him?

He leaned over and propped his elbows on the thin mattress. Over folded arms, he watched her sleep. In a very low voice, he asked, "I wonder what you would think about everything I've done since you've been gone. You might be disappointed in me. You said I taught you that all life was precious and valuable, then I go on a rampage to get even with Dread for taking you away from me. I don't know if I can explain what I've done. It's nothing to be proud of."

No response.

He reached out and carefully touched her cheek. It was warm, alive. _She_ was alive. "I haven't been the same, Jennifer. I don't know what you'd call what I've done. I've just destroyed. I turned my back on everything I believed in, everything you said I taught you. I haven't been saving lives the way I used to. It's not something I'm proud of, but it's what I've done."

There was a small pained moan from her. Jon stopped talking and concentrated. Again, another small moan. "Jennifer?" He noticed the rapid eye movement and pressed the alert button to call for the doctor. Within moments, Kirkland rushed into the room with the three other members of the Power Team close behind.

Minutes passed as she performed a cursory examination, rechecking every monitor and vital sign. "Pulse, normal. Respiration, normal. Oxygen intake, normal. BP, normal... "She's coming around. Jennifer? Can you hear me?"

In moments, Jennifer's eyes opened slightly, and she blinked.

She _blinked_! Then her eyes closed again.

Doctor Kirkland pulled out a small penlight to check her pupils.

The team waited. If the hours they waited to hear about her condition two days earlier were interminable, the moments waiting for her to keep her eyes open between blinks were agonizingly long.

"How are you feeling, Jennifer?" she asked.

Jennifer nodded slightly as she closed her eyes again.

"You're going to be fine," Kirkland told her as Jennifer forced her eyes open again. "Everything's going to be all right. Do you remember what happened?"

Again, Jennifer nodded. "Attack," she whispered, her voice sounding almost raw. Again, she closed her eyes.

Kirkland looked up at the team and gave them a rather enigmatic smile. "I don't want to give her water just yet. I need to run some test to make sure she can ingest anything. Don't keep her awake too long. She's barely staying awake as it is. I'll be back in a few minutes to run those tests," she said in a low voice as she left the room.

Four very worried, confused men moved toward the hospital bed as quietly as they could.

"Jennifer?" Jon's voice was shaky.

She opened her eyes and blinked again, as if trying to clear her vision.

She looked at the team, then she looked around the room. She frowned, then glanced back at Jon. "What..." she coughed, "happened?" her voice was weak. "The power... source..."

"You got to the power source," Jon said quickly. "You stopped Blastarr."

Her frown deepened. She tried to take a deep breath, but she was having some difficulty. "I did? ... But... no, told you to... stay back. The explosion - "

"We're working on that," Jon told her. "We stayed back, but something happened. We're not really sure how it all worked out yet."

She was quiet for a minute before whispering, "I heard Mentor yelling." Her voice was raspy and tired.

"Yelling?" Jon prompted her. Whatever it was she thought she heard, whether it was just a misinterpretation of sounds or a dream, it didn't matter. He wanted to keep her talking for just a few moments longer. It felt unbelievable that he was hearing her voice again. He thought he would only have the memory of her telling him she loved him that fateful moment. To hear her voice again...

"He was yelling your name... and saying something... about Taggart. Only something was... wrong."

Scout leaned closer. "What was wrong?"

Her words became more breathy, as if she were having trouble forming them. "Voice sounded real. Not a computer voice." That was all she could say before falling asleep again.

They all stood there silently for a moment just watching her sleep. "It is her," Scout finally said, any disbelief that could have been in his voice gone completely. "It's her. How?"

Tank placed his hand on Scout's shoulder. "We'll figure out how later. How do you know for certain that it's her from what she said?"

Scout looked at them, looking worried as he seemed to debate telling them. Finally, he answered. "She's the only one who can tell the difference between Mentor's voice and a recording of Stuart Power's voice. She just said the voice sounded real, and she's the only one who could say something like that and it mean something."

"There's a difference?" Jon asked him. "Mentor's voice is a recording of Dad's voice."

Scout nodded. "She made the distinction not too long after she joined up with us. She listened to some of Stuart Power's recordings and talked to Mentor. When she asked me about it, I told her I couldn't hear a difference. She asked me not to say anything. I never knew why. Maybe she thought we might find it odd she could hear a distinction with a machine's voice, probably because she was raised by machines. She's the only one who would have ever made a comment like that."

Jon had never heard a real distinction other than Mentor's voice was heard over speakers and his dad's voice was real. Yet Jennifer heard something wrong in 'Mentor's' voice?

"Wait, she thinks it was a real voice?" Hawk paced a few steps in the small space. "Not Mentor's? Oh, my God -"

"Hawk?" Jon looked up at his friend. "What is it?"

Hawk leaned against the wall. "It's just the thought - it's impossible, but that storm, when it was a single storm, it stretched from what used to be the Jet Propulsion Laboratories all the way to what used to be the Los Alamos Labs, right?"

"Right," Tank answered.

"We found Jennifer alive at the old JPL site. There were no other indications that there was anyone else there. We didn't pick up any other life signs in the area, but there weren't any signals from communicators in that area."

"Okay, yeah, following you so far," Scout's voice sounded curious.

"And Jennifer said she heard Mentor yelling, calling Jon's name and saying something about Taggart, and we know that Mentor doesn't call Dread _Taggart_. He calls him Dread."

Jon, Tank and Scout glanced at each other, all completely unsure of where Hawk's thought processes were going.

"What if it wasn't her imagination or a dream? What if she did hear Mentor's voice, only it wasn't Mentor?"

Jon stood up straight. "Wait, are you thinking it was Dad?"

Scout took a deep breath, realizing what Hawk was saying. "If it was time travel, and whoever it was brought Jennifer forward in time, then why not Stuart?"

Jon shook his head. "That's impossible. Dad's dead."

"So was Jennifer," Hawk corrected him. "We saw her die. There was no doubt, but there she is. I'm not saying Stuart_ is_ alive. I'm just saying that we don't know what we're dealing with, and if Jennifer can be here, then why not Stuart if she heard _his _voice? What if she really did hear him?"

Tank couldn't agree. Yet. "But sensors showed that there were no other life signs other than ours where we found Jennifer."

"At the JPL site," Hawk reminded him. "That's at one end of the storm. What if there was something going on at the Los Alamos site? At the other end?"

A chance? Could it be? No one knew what to think or what to believe.

Hawk tried again. "Maybe we should check it out."

Leave? So soon? "Not now," Jon said. "She just woke up, but she needs us here until she's awake for good."

"Not arguing that point," Hawk quickly agreed. "I don't want to leave her alone here either."

"Tomorrow," Scout said definitively. "We'll check out Los Alamos tomorrow. She should be more awake by then, we can tell her what's happened, we can find out more about what she remembers and I can research the area before we go. Maybe pinpoint a smaller locale at the other end of the storm system."

There was no disagreement. The thought that someone who could be as important to the Resistance movement as Stuart Power was still alive was one nobody was going to dismiss.

And the fact that someone who was definitely important to them was alive and back - no, that was definite. Any if's, and's and maybe's would have to wait.

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Friday**

**March 22nd, 2357**

**Jet Propulsion Laboratories in San Gabriel Valley, California**

Ah, coffee.

That wonderfully caffeinated dark brew that brought calmness to chaos and alertness to the sleepy mind - it was Delphi Aderholdt's lifeblood. Some of her friends joked that she should hook an I.V. into her arm and let the coffee get into her that way, but she enjoyed the taste far too well.

So what if she had a bit of a coffee habit?

Besides, after being awake for over... how long? 38 hours? Longer than that? Even the most ardent of her detractors would vote that a cup of coffee was a good idea.

She lifted her cup to take another sip when a hand gently forced the cup back to the desk. She looked up and saw Elias Pitcairn standing there with an amused grin on his face. "What?"

"I'm cutting you off, Delphi. You've had way too many pots of coffee, no food and absolutely no sleep. I'm pulling rank on you."

Delphi laughed. "You can't pull rank on me. I run the lab."

"Then I'm committing mutiny and doing it as a personal favor to everyone who works here. No one wants to deal with you when you're completely decaffeinated, but absolutely no one wants to deal with you when you're exhausted and over-caffeinated. Go grab something to eat and then take a nap. Believe me, _we'll_ all be the better for it."

Delphi released her cup and stood up. "Elias, are you saying I'm a difficult person?"

"Absolutely! Especially when your exhaustion-to-caffeine-level ratio is unbalanced," Elias joked. "Look, I've got every computer and every lab tech here and at Los Alamos working on putting every bit of information together. As soon as we have it, I'll get it to you, but you're not going to see one sentence if you don't get a few hours sleep. That's an order."

Dephi sighed in defeat and gave Elias a mock salute. "Yes, sir. Right away, sir. Will do, sir." She stood and relinquished her favorite coffee mug to her friend. "Few things -"

"Just one," Elias warned. "I'm not Aladdin's genie. I don't grant three wishes. You're only getting one."

Delphi was almost too tired to laugh, but she did smile. "Okay, one thing. Just tell me the status of where we are right now."

Pitcairn nodded. "Okay. Then you're going to bunk out for a few hours. Interference and turbulence on the timeline have settled down enough to let us find the general date in 2148 that Chase was sent to, sometime in July, and we've narrowed down the JPL test sites that Chase could have been sent to. The problem is that we can't find a way to pinpoint her exact location yet."

"She may have been moved not too long after she was transferred," Delphi concluded.

"Possibly. We're still looking into that. Right now, we're using other clues to try to find her. Those geology reports talk about some rainstorm over the southwest in early July of 2148 that filled up the waterways and washed out some areas. Big coincidence, huh? We're focusing on that time. We may have to expand the temporal search parameters somewhat, but that also decreases the degree of accuracy in our findings. We're having to check out each particular test site on each particular day, and it's taking a while to do. If she's been moved, then the odds are finding her are worse. Even Old Vegas wouldn't take bets on it."

Delphi sighed. "Any news on Stuart Power?"

"No news," Pitcairn said, his manner suddenly nonchalant. "Still looking for him too, and that's two things, not just one. Remember, I'm not a genie."

Delphi just shook her head and started to walk toward the door. "Okay, I get the picture. I'm heading for my bunk. See?" She turned slightly and pointed toward the door. "This is me, walking toward the door, heading for my bunk to sleep for a couple of hours and you'll be waking me up to tell me something else..."

"Hint taken," Elias chided her. "Sleep well. Tight, no bedbugs, whatever the old saying is."

Delphi hadn't even walked ten steps down the corridor when she heard one of the assistants yell, "Doctor Pitcairn! We found Stuart Power!"

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Sunday**

**July 7th, 2148**

**Old Los Alamos Laboratories Location**

2148.

The year was 2148.

How was that possible?

The last year he remembered was 2132. June 14th, 2132, to be exact.

He had been a prisoner in Volcania. Jon was there. Matt was coming. Taggart was utterly insane, he was fighting for his life…

Stuart Power had no idea how the year could be 2148. Where had he been? Why didn't he have any memories of sixteen years passing by? Where were Jon and Matt? What had Taggart done to the world and why couldn't he remember any of it happening?

All he really knew was that he had found himself three days ago lying on the edge of a dead forest near a small settlement somewhere in New Mexico while a vicious snow/sleet/rain storm raged around him. Once the storm passed, he had cautiously walked into the settlement, cold, shivering, soaking wet, and asked a perfect stranger a question that made him sound like an insane man. "Where am I?"

More conversations with other people, and he had found out that the year was 2148. July 4th, 2148. Had he been hit on the head and knocked unconscious? Did he have some type of amnesia? Was he stunned and left for dead? Was he drugged? He had no idea how he ended up where he did. Everyone was so concerned with the odd weather pattern that had pounded their settlement for the last week with storms coming every hour then stopping for an hour that a stranger in their midst didn't even raise an eyebrow.

So for three days, he stayed at the settlement, doing odd jobs for room and board, finding out what was going on in the world by listening and not asking too many questions that would seem strange to the settlers. There was a lot said about Dread and the biomechs, but he didn't involve himself in those conversations. He had the impression that _that_ was something that would raise an eyebrow if he said he didn't know what they were talking about. On the morning of the 7th, he sat at the entrance of a tavern, pretending to be repairing his boots during a break in the rain. In actuality, his wrist communicator had been damaged in his fight with Taggart, and he spent a great deal of his time for the last three days scrounging the parts he needed to repair it. A wire here, a piece of metal there – and if he could get it to work, he could send out the emergency signal. Quietly, secretly, no one around him the wiser.

Jon would be a grown man now, 31 years old. Was Jon looking for him? That was one reason Stuart had remained in the settlement. If he was supposed to have been in the area whenever what happened to him happened, then wouldn't Jon look for him in the area when Stuart didn't show up to meet him or return to… wherever it was he was supposed to return to?

He never once considered that Jon wasn't alive. Rumors around the settlement of "Captain Power" and something about the Power pilot being alive told Stuart that his son was alive and well and still fighting. And a captain? Stuart was amused by that. When Jon was a boy, he loved to read nautical stories about sea captains. Maybe he took the title because of that? Matt, if he was alive, must be running a resistance team of his own. After all, he was a major, but why hadn't Stuart heard of "Major Masterson's soldiers?" If he could just get his memory back…

2148.

July 7th, 2148.

Stuart was very confused.

With his proverbial fingers crossed, he pressed the button on his communicator to send a signal out to Jon and Matt.

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Friday**

**March 22nd, 2357**

**Cyclotron Laboratories**

The report from JPL had ripped through the temporal community. Memos to each lab were sent out simultaneously - they'd found Stuart Power.

But July 4th, 2148?

That was when Stuart Power was sent to?

News from JPL had come fast as soon as one of their lab techs had located the exact location of Stuart Power's landing date. The personnel at the Cyclotron Laboratories had been obviously relieved at that news - the man who helped lead the Resistance and was pivotal to the destruction of the Taggarts during the Badderdays was alive and well. The timeline might still be on track.

William Custer sat down at his desk and stared at his monitor. How had they found Power? He'd been tracking every single moment in the new timeline to try to locate his exact temporal location, but there'd been no indication of his whereabouts. What did the scientists at JPL do differently? There were only a few ways to track someone temporally. Did one of the computer techs get lucky or did they have a new technique Custer wasn't aware of? He had to think. Stuart Power was alive, he was sent forward sixteen years from the moment he was supposed to have been killed, and he had been found. He couldn't initiate another time wave to go back to that moment and finish Power off because all experiments had been halted. That meant he couldn't power up the Cyclotron.

This was not good for his plan.

If only he had been able to locate Power and not one of the scientists at the temporal labs, he could have hidden Power in the paperwork and no one would be the wiser.

He wrote a quick note in his journal.

_It's confirmed. Stuart Power is in 2148. I researched the state of the world during that year. The Machine Empire is decidedly in power at that time. My family's fortune may still be possible to claim even with Power's reappearance. Further study will be necessary. If Power is with the Resistance so many years later, it might be too late for his presence to change the path the timeline is on. More research is needed._

He slammed his journal shut, and said it in a disgusted voice, "Scite it all!"

He turned his attention toward his monitor and enhanced the clarity of the timeline observation. Something, somewhere, somewhen had to hide the key clue of getting his plan back on track.


	6. Chapter 6

**Sunday**

**July 7th, 2148**

**Resistance Hospital**

The day after she woke up the first time, Jennifer was awake again and listening to the team as they explained the current situation to her. All the details, all the speculations, all the wonderment behind the fact that the impossible had happened.

As explanations went, the team had done a remarkably good job explaining their current situation to Jennifer. It took over an hour and everyone was almost apologizing for their lack of exact data as they stumbled over certain facts, but they managed to get the general gist of events conveyed in a somewhat stumbling, coherent form.

Jon had raised the head of her bed raised slightly so she could get a better view of them while they spoke. One by one, she listened to each of her friends and patiently waited until they finished speaking.

Then, they waited for her to speak.

"Okay, let me get something straight... it's July?" Jennifer asked. "2148? And I wasn't digitized and reintegrated?"

"We don't understand it either," Scout explained. "You were at the base when you blew it up. We thought you were dead. You have no idea how happy we are you aren't."

"And you think I was time traveled to... here and now?" she asked.

"I know, it's an absolutely insane thought, but it's where the clues are leading us." Scout told her.

She just shook her head. "Okay, run me through the actual data," she told them. "Show me the numbers."

Scout pulled out a reader and handed it to her, but she was still a little too weak to hold it. Jon held it for her. Scout keyed up the storm data he'd been working on. "It starts here. These storms started a week before we found you, and they came and went on a schedule."

"Storms don't do that," Jennifer said, her voice sounding somewhat fragile.

"Nope, but these did," Scout continued. "And they got stronger until they all become one massive storm, and there were tachyon particles in that one."

That got Jennifer's attention. "That's when you found me?"

"Exactly."

The others remained quiet. When Scout and Jennifer started to work out a technological problem, everyone knew to keep quiet and let them talk. Experience had taught them that the two of them had a rapport that allowed them to work out any problem as long as they weren't interrupted or knocked off their trains of thought. So everyone else just stayed out of the way until they came to a conclusion.

Scout pointed out a particular file on the reader. "Then the tachyons were gone once the big storm split up into individual storms. Still, the storms aren't moving."

"But they're decreasing in strength," Jennifer noticed.

"Week building up, maybe a week breaking up."

"And you found me... where?"

"Here, at the far end of the storms." Scout showed her the location at the San Gabriel Valley. "What used to be the Jet Propulsion Laboratories. The other end is at the -"

"Where the Los Alamos Labs used to be," Jennifer said. "That doesn't make sense," she began to look through files on the reader, her hands betraying her still weakened condition.

Hawk and Tank moved so they could see the reader as well. "What doesn't make sense?" Tank asked.

"That tachyons were in a storm, that the storms reached between two laboratories that were mentioned in a documentary talking about a scientist doing tachyon research, that I showed up during the middle of the tachyon storm system but you found me at the far end of them geographically at one of these labs," she muttered. "So if I was at one end, what might be at the other?"

Tank smiled. "She just asked in less than a few minutes what took us hours to wonder about."

Scout pointed his finger at her jokingly. "She's into tactics. She's usually thinking rings around us."

Jon cleared his voice. "Do you remember what you told us earlier about what you heard?"

Jennifer had to think for a moment. "A scream. Mentor's voice, only it didn't sound right."

Hawk took the reader and glanced at the readout of the other end of the storm. "You also said that you heard Mentor mention the name Taggart. Mentor doesn't do that, but Stuart used to."

So Stuart Power used to call him Taggart... Jennifer suddenly realized what they were saying. "You think I heard Stuart Power? You think that Stuart Power could be at the other end of the storm, and maybe he showed up there a few days ago like I did?" She smiled at them and then settled back into the bed. "So what are you still doing here?"

The four men glanced at each other, but before they could stumble over some over-protective explanation, Jennifer said, "I'm fine. I'm not going anywhere. And if there's someone to be found in Los Alamos, then you guys are wasting time sitting here watching me sleep."

Scout gave her a big hug. "Oh, she's all right. She's fine. She's back." He had a big grin on his face when he looked at Jon. "Captain, I've got a general area we can start looking in. I took the area we found Jennifer at and sort of flipped it. Maybe if we go about the same distance from the other end of the storm system, we might find something. Or someone."

Decision time. Jennifer saw the others watch Jon as he decided what to do.

Jon looked up at Hawk. "Matt, prep the ship. Scout, get all the data you've been working on loaded in the onboard computer. Let's see what else we can learn about the storms. Tank, just in case, check the archives for pass codes we used sixteen years ago. Frequencies too."

Scout took the reader, opened up all the files concerning the recent anomalies, and then handed it back to Jennifer. "Here. You get caught up on everything I've got so far. I'm sure we missed some things in our explanations. I'll get all the info I can at Los Alamos. If we put our heads together and tack it on to all this data I've been collecting, maybe we can figure out what's going on when we get back."

"Scout," Hawk scolded him, "this is her first day awake!"

"Yeah. She's been sleeping too long," Scout joked. "We don't have any time to waste."

Hawk tapped Scout on the shoulder. "You want to prove time travel, don't ya?"

Scout smirked. "Well, I didn't have anything better to do. Besides, we could get famous if we figure out how Jennifer got here." He looked directly at her. "What about you? Want to get written up in scientific journals some day when they're actually being written again?" he joked. "We'll share the byline."

Jennifer laughed. "Sure. Go. Doctor Kirkland said she had to run some more tests on me, so other than that, I won't be too busy for the next few days," she smiled back. "I'll see what else I can find in the files."

Scout gave her a wink and a nod and pushed the other two out of the room, muttering something about needing to increase sensor strength on the jumpship's computer. The three left Jennifer and Jon alone for the first time since she woke up.

Jennifer got a good look at Jon. His hair was longer than she'd ever seen him wear it. There was gray in his hair, new wrinkles - he looked a little older than did the last time she saw him, and for the first time in all the years she'd known him, Jennifer saw Jonathan Power nervous. He was almost twiddling his fingers, he was so nervous!

"What's wrong?" she asked.

Jon shrugged, shook his head -

"Jon?" she asked.

Finally, he reached out and took her hand. "You're here. You're alive. And I can't explain it."

"Jon -"

"It's been months since you were killed... or we thought you were killed," he said. "Now you're here and..."

Jon was almost stumbling over his words. Jennifer had never seen him behave like that before. She looked down at his hand and laced her fingers with his. "And?" she prompted him.

Jon's eyes looked haunted to Jennifer. There was a shadow there that almost scared her.

"I'm having a little trouble believing it," he told her.

Jennifer smiled slightly. "I'm having trouble believing _any_ of it. To me, it seems like yesterday I was facing down Blastarr, and then I woke up here."

"And months for us while we thought you were dead," Jon repeated.

Months? But... oh. Jennifer suddenly saw the difference in perspective. To her, there was no difference. She had been in a fight, been hurt, knocked unconscious and woke up in a hospital. Nothing unusual in that for any of them. But for the guys, they had thought her dead, considered her gone and had continued on with their lives and the war without her. They'd worked around whatever hole her absence had made on the team and had created a new dynamic for themselves.

_She had been dead._

They'd gone on without her, doing the job they chose to do without her.

She suddenly felt like an unneeded fifth wheel.

For her, nothing had changed. For them - "I guess things are a lot different now?" she whispered.

"Some," he said. "We've got a new base, Dread transferred into a biodread body, we've found some new allies. Things like that."

They were silent for a moment, then Jennifer asked a question she wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer to. "Did you look for a new pilot?"

Jon tightened his grip on her hand and shook his head. "No. Didn't want a new person on the team, and," he gave her an amused grin, "the old jumpship barely tolerates it when Hawk flies her. I don't think she'd let anyone else at her controls. We would have had to use the brand new ship for a new pilot, and even if we did, we liked the ship we had. It had all the setups we preferred. Then there was no time to train anyone new even if we had wanted to bring in someone. It's been pretty busy out there."

That was a bit of fast-talking double-talk. He was nervous! He really didn't know what to say to her or how to say it. Jennifer overlooked it all at that moment. It would take time for him to get back to the comfortable status of their relationship. Yet, he hadn't looked for a new pilot? "But you thought I was dead," she reminded him.

Jon shrugged. "We did. I did. And you were gone. Every day, we missed you." He seemed to search for the right words. Then he looked her directly in the eyes and said, "I missed you."

She squeezed his hand in response.

A single ding sounded over the communicator. "_Jon, we're ready to go_," Hawk's voice told him.

"On my way," he answered. Then he looked back at Jennifer. "You know, we've got a talk to finish," he reminded her.

Talk? What was he... oh. That talk. "It's not -"

"It's important," Jon told her quietly. "I think we have a lot to talk about, and I think we both get to say the same things." He smiled.

Jennifer returned his smile. "We've got time," she said. "When you get back, I'll still be here."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

**~0~0~0~0~**

**Power Jumpship**

Scout hummed an old rock tune to himself as he continued to download all the data he'd researched about the storms into the onboard computer. The information created various computer recreations and statistical models. He typed the final bit of information in and waited for it to run through the programs.

The sound of happy humming was something no one had heard in months. It was a pleasant change.

"What are you humming?" Tank asked him.

"Crocodile Rock," he answered quickly. "Great beat, easy lyrics, and I'm feeling good enough to sing again. You know, of all the completely crazy things we've seen in our time and all the insane and suicidal stunts we've pulled off, this has to be the most unbelievable thing to happen to us."

"Definitely one for the record books," Tank agreed.

Hawk almost laughed, his soft chuckle echoing back from the pilot's seat. "I think we've opened up an entirely new record book. Jon, you talked to her alone. Is she really all right?"

Scout glanced over at Jon. For someone who normally took the most scattered information and could catalog it mentally and create battle tactics that worked in mere moments, Jonathan Power looked utterly confused.

"For her, it's only been a couple of days. She destroyed the biomechs, fought Blastarr and set off the power source. The next thing she's aware of, she's waking up at the hospital after major surgery. It's no more than if she had been injured and knocked unconscious, waking up a few hours later." He shrugged and shook his head. "She's fine."

"But we're not," Scout declared.

The other three stared at him for a moment. "Look, face it, we thought she was dead and went on with our lives because we had to. We had a war to fight. We've changed tactics, changed jobs, re-created old strategies for just the four of us again because it _was_ just the four of us again. I mean, we couldn't go back to exactly the way we were before she joined the team because we're not the same four people anymore. We've changed."

"She hasn't," Hawk agreed. "She's still where we were in December but we're all months away from that place in our lives."

Jon cleared his voice. "So we reset everything to being the five of us again," he stated quietly. "All of us will have to. It's a new reality for us now."

Hawk turned slightly toward Jon. "Just out of curiosity, is resetting our idea of real life going to be possible if Stuart is alive?"

Jon didn't say anything. Hawk turned back toward the view port, Tank resumed monitoring for any signal that could be identified as sixteen-year-old technology, and Scout checked the data the computer was sorting through. The idea that Stuart Power was alive didn't seem as farfetched as it did when they first considered it. After all, Jennifer was alive and well and in the hospital. Why couldn't Stuart be brought to their time as well?

And if he was alive and well, then what?

Time travel. The idea wasn't as totally impossible as it seemed on the Fourth when they found Jennifer. Scout had to smile at the thought of it all. The idea that time travel existed had gone from the fictional to the impossible to the ludicrous to the possible, but when had it become probable? When had Scout actually believed it? Easy. When all other explanations could be disproven, of course.

To be honest, it was when Jennifer had awakened that first time and said something that only Scout knew. Jennifer had told them she had heard Mentor's voice, only it didn't sound right. The way she formed her words, the words she chose to use, how she said it - the two of them were responsible for Mentor's programming and his maintenance. They knew Mentor better than anyone else. They had listened to recordings that Stuart Power had made, and Scout could never tell the difference between Stuart and Mentor's voices. Jennifer could. She picked up on the nuances of a mechanized voice better than he could. She could always tell the difference. When she said that Mentor's voice sounded wrong...

She recognized the voice as Stuart's.

Until that moment, only Scout knew that Jennifer could tell the difference between the two voices, and he knew the moment she said what she did that she was really their Jennifer.

That also meant that for Stuart to be alive, for him to have escaped the explosion in Volcania, he would have had to have been physically removed - just like Jennifer must have been for her to be there with them.

Time travel wasn't possible, not for them, but Scout was having a hard time putting the various clues like lack of cellular growth, tachyons and strange storms together with any other conclusion. Take matter transference, for example. As far as they knew, the digitization system didn't allow Overmind, Soaron and Blastarr's digitizers to access each other's storage units. The hard drives and storage systems were independent of each other. They had to consciously upload data patterns to another's database. Blastarr couldn't have digitized Jennifer and sent her pattern to another hard drive so Soaron or Overmind could reintegrate her. Then there was the problem of the tachyons being in the storms when they were united and finding Jennifer at the height of the storm but physically at one end of it.

Tank was right. This was definitely one for the record books.

The idea that time travel had occurred was one thing. Understanding how it could have happened was another. And why? And who? Was there an ulterior reason behind everything or was it a mere fluke? Maybe an experiment? Good guys? Bad guys? Could even Dread himself been behind it all for some arcane purpose? But if he was behind it, there's no reason for him to bring back Jennifer or Stuart Power.

His train of thought was interrupted.

"I'm picking up an emergency signal," Tank told Jon. "Database confirms that it is Stuart Power's personal communicator code."

No one said anything. What could they say?

"Hawk?" Jon sounded unsure.

"Got the coordinates. I'm heading there," Hawk told him as he adjusted the ship's heading. "Maybe ten minutes out."

A thought occurred to Scout. "What's the range of that type of communicator?"

Hawk and Jon glanced at each other. "Not even one quarter of the distance our communicators can cover today," Jon told him. "Why?"

Scout began to rethink distances. "Los Alamos is hundreds of miles away from JPL," he muttered. "If Stuart is there and he's been trying to use his communicator to reach you since the 4th, we wouldn't have picked up the signal. We were too far away."

Jon moved over to Tank's console to look at the readout for the communicator pass code. "Scout, it almost sounds like you're believing the unbelievable."

"Clues are pointing to it, Captain. Sherlock Holmes said once you eliminate the impossible, whatever's left, however improbable, must be the truth. To be honest with you, I still feel like we just landed in a science fiction movie."

Tank focused the sensors on the pass code. "Science fiction may be right. Reconfirming pass code as Stuart Power's. I'm beginning to believe that time travel is more real than we thought."

"We'll find out soon. Los Alamos, New Mexico, dead ahead," Hawk announced as he flew the jump ship in for a landing. Smoothly, slowly, the ship touched down without so much as a bump.

Scout cleared his throat. "Has anyone else noticed that this ship just flew a lot better than usual?"

Hawk turned and glared at Scout. "Hey, I can fly. It's not my fault this ship wants Jennifer sitting in the pilot's seat. Now that the ship knows she's back, she's on her best behavior."

"I dunno," Scout continued. "Hawk's not our usual pilot; new ship may like him better if -"

"Don't go there," Jon suggested. "This is our primary ship. Let's just leave it at that for now."

Scout turned in his seat toward Jon. "Captain, do you really think that this is a bit of information we should keep from Jennifer -"

"For now, Scout," Jon repeated. "Just for now. We'll tell her about it all later. Right now, she has enough to deal with. But I did sort of hint at the news."

"Hint?"

Jon gave a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders. "I'm not telling her about the new ship directly just yet. You know she'd love to see exactly what it can do, how fast it can fly, what she can do to it to make it fly better since it's still stuck in the maintenance garage and she's stuck in a hospital bed for a few more days. It'll wait until she's better. Besides, I'm not sure how she'd take the news of us even thinking of using the new ship. You know she loves this one. This is _her_ jumpship."

Right. Even their fearless leader didn't broach the subject of not using the jumpship without some fear and trepidation, not to their pilot. Scout forced himself not to smile at that idea.

Hawk unstrapped the buckles and walked back to Tank's console. "Jon, I think I need to go first. See if it is Stuart."

"Matt -"

"I know he was your dad, but he was my friend. To be honest, I knew him better than you did. And longer. If he's not the real thing, I might be able to see that first."

Jon nodded. "All right. But everybody power on your suits. We just don't know ... well, we don't know. I'd rather be prepared."

"Take these," Scout said as he pulled two devices out of a storage bin and handed them to Hawk.

"What are these?" the older man asked.

"One's the DNA verifier. We've got the captain's DNA on file, so you can compare it to Stuart's if he's out there. The other checks out the communicator to see if it's the real thing. I used the on-board database to download any information we have on the communicators you used then. It should let you know if it's real or something recently built."

Hawk nodded. "Right. Proof."

Seeing the look on Hawk's face, Scout realized he hadn't truly considered the effect a possible meeting with Stuart Power could have. This wasn't just anyone. This was the scientist who helped create Overmind, who invented the power suits and the jumpgates. This was the man who was able to get two bases built right under Dread's nose, who designed Mentor. In a way, he was the architect of the Resistance. He was remembered as this larger-than-life individual, but beneath all the public relations spin, he was just a man with a vision to try to save the world. He was a husband and a father. There on the jumpship was his son and his friend - and if this wasn't Stuart, how would that affect Hawk and Jon? More than that, if it wasn't Stuart, then did that mean that the woman back at the med lab wasn't Jennifer?

And if she wasn't Jennifer, what would that do to Jon?

The team might not survive another round of grief with him.

**~0~0~0~0~**

Whittling.

Pick up a stick or piece of wood, take knife, place blade against wood and shave. Lift blade, repeat process. There was no real point to the activity, but it passed the time.

Stuart had absolutely no idea what he was doing. He'd never whittled before. During a break in the rainstorms that morning, he saw one of the men at the settlement pick up a piece of wood and begin carving a serving spoon. That seemed simple enough. Stuart picked up a large stick, pulled out his knife and began carving as he rested outside of the settlement.

He loved that knife. It was a Swiss Army knife he'd inherited from his father. It had so many uses, so many blades and gadgets that Stuart had learned long ago to never go anywhere without it. He'd forgotten he had it in his pocket for two days after he woke up near the settlement. He could have used it to help repair his communicator and maybe even repaired it faster. Oh, well, that's what they called hindsight.

After a while, he decided that he'd never have the skill to carve a spoon. Maybe he could make it look more like a tiny bowl? Or maybe he'd just admit defeat? He tossed the wood away from him and put his knife back in his pocket. Maybe he could find something else to pass the time until Matt or Jon made contact with him. Or until the next storm hit and forced him indoors again.

He considered his circumstances and not for the first time since he had woke up at the edge of the dead forest. The people of the settlement were nice enough. They weren't too trusting of strangers, but they didn't turn one away. They were willing to trade food and shelter for work. They were slow to smile or laugh, but they were quick with a helping hand. They worked hard in the nearby fields, but food was scarce, that was obvious. Deprivation, starvation - were they common afflictions everywhere? Stuart could see how hard life was for them and wondered if the rest of the country was in the same situation since he couldn't remember.

Yet the people he had met had this zest for life that their circumstances hadn't stamped out. Just the night before, they'd held a sweetheart's dance at the main hall. Stuart didn't feel like he should go since he was still a stranger, but he enjoyed the music from several buildings away where he had asked the local shopkeeper for a night's lodging in exchange for sweeping up and stacking boxes and barrels. He didn't recognize the music, but it was fast and lively. Then, that's when he saw true smiles and happy faces. So they could smile and laugh at times and not be slow about it. He was beginning to wonder if the phrase 'a time and place for everything' had taken on a more pertinent meaning than being just a cliché. They found moments of enjoyment in the life of hardship.

Was the rest of the country like that or was it just this settlement? Were some places experiencing more abundance or was everyone scrounging to survive like these settlers? Was life this hard everywhere? Was it harder?

A sound echoed down from the sky, interrupting his thoughts, and Stuart tried to track the source. He noticed a small silvery speck coming toward the settlement. As it drew closer, Stuart recognized it as a TF jumpship. It didn't look like the one he and Matt had worked on at the base. This one had been damaged and repaired more than once. Nothing looked like it was original equipment. Still, he couldn't take the chance that it wasn't another jumpship that Matt had got somehow. Maybe they were finally responding to his signal?

Effortlessly, the ship landed outside the settlement without so much as a bump or a whine. The engines were quieter than Stuart thought they should be. It must be a different ship or someone else's ship. It couldn't have been the one Matt was working on. From what he remembered, the engines were anything but quiet.

He sat where he was as others from the settlement began to approach the ship. There was no sign of fear from anyone, so Stuart assumed that the settlers knew the visitors. He couldn't see through the crowds who disembarked, so he waited to see what happened next.

At least it was a better way to pass the time than whittling.

The settlers crowded around a helmeted individual. Stuart couldn't see who it was, but whoever it was must have been a friend. Finally, the helmet turned toward him and the visor was pushed up -

"Oh, my God… Stuart?"

Stuart looked around as soon as he heard his name. Matt Masterson. Stuart stood as soon as he saw his friend push his way through the small crowd of people surrounding the ship, removing his helmet as he approached. He was dressed in a power suit! They'd found them. Maybe he shouldn't have been surprised. He would have started using the power suits long ago, but he just didn't remember, right? That brought up a question - should he be wearing one as well? He'd consider that later, but dressed in the power suit, Matt looked older, far older than Stuart had considered. "Matt, thank goodness. I was beginning to get worried. I woke up here three days ago, and I had no idea how I got here. I guessed that if you were to meet me, it'd be in this vicinity so I stayed here. The communicator wasn't working and I had to find a way to repair it… Matt?" The look of utter shock and surprise in Matt's eyes worried him. "What's wrong?"

Matt stared at him, shaking his head. "Wrong? Believe me, you wouldn't believe me." Matt's voice was shaky and unsure. "Uh, I need to see your communicator."

Without hesitation, Stuart removed the repaired communicator from his wrist and handed it to his friend. He watched as Matt withdrew some type of instrument from a pouch on his belt and analyze the communicator. It was some type of device that Stuart didn't recall seeing before. Then he pulled another device from his belt and handed it to Stuart. "Here. Just hold this for a second, okay?"

Stuart took what looked like a type of genetic verifier and watched the monitor as it indicated a result in a pattern he'd never seen before. Matt took the device back, read the results and then called out, "It's him! Jon!"

Jon? Finally! Stuart looked around… a man in a different style of power suit walked through the small crowd. He removed his helmet – it was Jon. A grown man, not the boy he remembered. Taller, frown lines from stress, a confident yet wary posture - "Jon?"

"Matt, are you sure it's him?" Jon asked.

Hawk nodded, the smile on his face practically beaming. "It's Stuart. There's no doubt. DNA proves it. Compared it to yours. It's him."

Jon approached, unable to believe his own eyes. "Dad?"

"Yes," Stuart answered, relieved, but why were they surprised? And why were they proving he was who he said he was? "Look, can someone tell me what happened? I don't know if I was injured or drugged or knocked out or what, but I don't remember how I got here –"

"What's the last thing you do remember?" Matt interrupted quickly.

"I was at Volcania fighting Taggart. There was an explosion, then it felt like I was being pulled out of there, there was a scream and a metallic voice and then I woke up here. I didn't know where _here_ was. Then I spoke to some of the people here at the settlement and found out it's 2148. I don't remember the last sixteen years, and I don't know why I don't remember it." Stuart looked at his friend and his son; saw the shocked look they shared. What was wrong?

"A scream?" Jon asked. "What kind of scream?"

After all he'd told them, they were only curious about a scream? Stuart tried to remember the exact sound. "A painful scream. A woman's voice. She was yelling at someone to go to hell, I think."

Stuart saw both Jon and Matt share a surprised look.

"Jon," Matt whispered, "Jennifer said she heard what didn't quite sound like Mentor's voice calling the name Taggart. In that moment, they must have been connected somehow and heard each other?"

"Maybe they were moved together?" Jon suggested. "Whatever moved them grabbed them at the same time and they heard each other? Scout's gong to have a lot more information to add."

Stuart saw the two men share another odd look. "What's going on?"

Matt walked up to him and placed his hand on Stuart's shoulder. "Stuart, there's no easy way to tell you this. Just bear with us for a few moments and we'll try to explain what we know which isn't much. First, when you showed up here, what was the weather like?" Matt asked him.

"It was storming," Stuart answered. "It was cold, snowing, sleeting, lots of lightning, but then it stopped. Temperatures warmed up a bit between storms. The rains have continued off and on every hour for the last three days. They've been decreasing in intensity. The people here in the settlement said they've never seen rain behave like that. You can almost set a watch by them. The next storm will start in about ten minutes."

"Punctual storms," Matt seemed to be indicating the obvious. "Just like at JPL."

Jon tucked his helmet under his arm and approached his father. "Dad, we don't have a real explanation yet. Just a working theory. You probably won't believe it and we're still struggling to believe it." Jon took a deep breath. "Basically, we think you're not going to remember the last sixteen years because they didn't happen to you."

That was definitely not what Stuart was expecting to hear, and he did not like being confused. "What do you mean they didn't happen?" He looked at each man in front of him, his confusion apparent. "Was I digitized?"

"No," another man in an activated powersuit approached. "It's nowhere near that simple."

Matt motioned for Stuart to follow them back towards the ship as the crowd dispersed after the initial excitement of visitors had worn off, and they went back into the settlement. "Stuart, it's going to be a very long story. We'll tell you all of it soon. Right now, just meet the rest of the team."

Team? This was their team?

"This is Sergeant Robert Baker. We call him Scout. He's demolitions and computer systems."

Stuart shook Scout's hand, surprised by the look on his face. "What is it?" he asked.

"You look exactly like Mentor," Scout told him.

Okay, strange thing to say...

A very large man encased in a metal power suit approached from another direction.

"This is Lieutenant Michael Ellis, codename Tank. He was from Babylon 5. He's our infantry."

Stuart could definitely see the sense in having an individual such as Ellis as infantry. He shook the man's massive hand, sensing the calm strength within.

"You do look exactly like Mentor," Tank said to him. "Only I thought you'd be taller."

"Mentor makes you think that he'd be taller," Scout agreed. "We always have to look up at him."

"And when we get back to the Resistance hospital, you'll get to meet Corporal Jennifer Chase," Matt pointed out. "She's our pilot."

"Pilot?" Stuart asked. "You're not the pilot?"

Matt laughed. "Believe me, the jumpship wouldn't have it any other way."

Whatever was going on, Stuart had a lot to catch up on. "Okay, I'm pleased to meet everyone, I guess I'm glad there's a team, but shouldn't I already know you and I wasn't digitized?"

Matt placed a wary hand on Stuart's shoulder. "Prepare to believe the unbelievable. This is going to be confusing," he muttered more to himself than anyone else.

Scout showed Stuart the data readouts on the handheld monitor. "No, you weren't digitized. We've got a working theory that makes absolutely no sense, but we haven't figured out anything else yet. Sensors picked up a high rate of tachyon particles generated in the storm when you must have shown up here –"

"Tachyon particles?" Stuart asked in astonishment as he quickly assimilated the data. "I only know a few theories regarding tachyon particles. Are you suggesting I was moved through time? Time travel isn't possible."

Scout nodded. "That's what we thought but then we got Jennifer back the same way a few days ago."

Stuart glanced at Matt and raised an eyebrow.

Matt answered. "Seven months ago, Dread discovered the Colorado base. Our pilot, Jennifer Chase, was there alone when Dread's robots attacked. She was fatally wounded, we thought, when she manually triggered the power source to blow up the base and a biodread. There's no way she could have made it out. We watched her die over the vid-link. A few days ago, we found her unconscious at the old JPL site, right in the middle of a storm with the exact same wounds she had at the moment she blew up the base. Medical tests show that she hasn't aged or healed in all that time."

Stuart had no problem interpreting that explanation. "You're saying that it appears she was moved from that moment to the moment you found her." He thought through the data and tried to make sense of it. "And there were tachyons recorded when you found her."

"Not just there," Scout added. "We picked up tachyons throughout the entire storm. It started at JPL, ended here at where Los Alamos used to be."

Los Alamos? Stuart looked around. The area looked nothing like he remembered Los Alamos looked. "This is Los Alamos?"

"After Dread got through with it," Tank added. "He leveled all the buildings here when he attacked years ago. Destroyed everything."

Dread again. He'd been hearing so much about Dread in the three days he'd been at the settlement, how much he'd destroyed, how bleak things had gotten until recently when the Resistance was starting to gain ground in the war. Who was this Dread?

Stuart looked back at Jon. His teenage son was gone. Before him stood a grown man, one not much younger than himself. Some gray in his hair, a few wrinkles around the eyes, no, the teenager was gone. Matt, he looked older too. The world... even the devastation he'd seen was nothing compared to what lay before his eyes now. "Sixteen years?" he asked his son.

Jon nodded. "It's been a long time, Dad. It's been a long war."

Stuart took a deep breath. "I guess I've got a lot of catching up to do, don't I?"

"Catch up on the way back," Matt said. "I don't want to have to fly that ship through another storm so I'm going around it. I also want to get us all together again before we start putting our ducks in a row and figuring out if we really are in a science fiction story or if this is all real."


	7. Chapter 7

**Friday**

**March 22nd, 2357**

**Jet Propulsion Laboratories **

The lab tech handed reams of paper to Pitcairn and Aderholdt. "To start with, we went through the geology records. We found some geological markers that indicate a temporally influenced storm happened in 2148 in the western United States. We have no information as to the extent, width, length or strength of the storm, but we do know part of it occurred over New Mexico. With that information and with the temporal disturbance calming down, we were able to track where the wave fractal deposited the transportee. There's no mistake. Stuart Power was transported to Los Alamos, New Mexico on July 4th, 2148."

Delphi didn't even look through the paperwork. That was only half the news, good and bad. "2148. Then it's confirmed. That's later than it should be."

"Sixteen years later than it should be," Elias muttered.

The lab tech frowned. "But once we get exact temporal and geographic coordinates on Stuart Power and determine the correct trackers, you'll be able to move him back to 2132. Right?"

Delphi and Elias glanced at each other, then they both shook their heads.

"We don't know yet," Elias explained. "It could be that history will stay on track if he stays sixteen years from when he was taken from. It could be that moving him back to 2132 could produce more problems since he's seen 2148 and knows what the future would be. He'd probably try to change things which would cause us even more headaches. But there's no way to grab him up on July 4th, 2148, because of the temporal turbulence will always be there on that date and prevents us from getting a lock on him. We only know what happens on a timeline in the days after the turbulence dies down. Once we know that, then we can make a better decision on what to do with him."

Dephi looked through some of the paperwork. All those details, all those minute changes in the overall timeline - she was definitely going to have to make another pot of coffee to get through the quagmire. "And it takes about seven days for some of the changes in the timeline to reach us. Unfortunately, finding him on July 4th only lets us know where he landed. Being able to get a lock on him temporally? That's what we need to find out. We do that, we wait for the timeline turbulence to settle down so we can see the changes -"

"Then it gets worse," the tech explained. "We lose Stuart Power around July 7th, 2148. He's not at Los Alamos after that date. My guess is that he was moved. We're still tracking him down, but now we do have a temporal starting point."

"What about Corporal Chase?" Delphi asked.

"Nothing absolute geographically yet," was the answer. "All we knew to begin with is that she was sent to a temporal test site with JPL's temporal signature in 2148. Nothing was pinpointed. Since she went on the other half of the time wave that Power did, we used the assumption that she was transported to a JPL test site in the exact same temporal coordinates that Stuart Power did, July 4th, 2148, we've got no idea of the geographic coordinates yet. We're getting some strange results on the search, and my guess is that she was moved after the transfer to an undisclosed location which is why we can't locate her. Trying to find where she was sent on July 4th of that year isn't working out to be easy."

Undisclosed? Maybe that could be a clue? "There's not much that's undisclosed when looking back in history, but they could have been undisclosed in 2148," Elias reasoned.

"Sir?"

"We've been trying to find her by looking at the year 2148 as if we were living in that year. We've been proverbially walking ourselves through that timeline to try to locate them. What we need to do is check a post-war listing of Resistance bases and find out which ones existed during early July of 2148 and where," Elias suggested. "Let's work on the assumption that she would have needed shelter and would have tried to reach some friendly forces."

"Check the information backwards. Find out where she could have possibly gone and work back from there," Delphi agreed. "Focus on hospitals, infirmaries, and med labs. Everyone for over two hundred years has assumed she was badly injured in that fight at the Power Base, so let's run with that idea first. Maybe we'll get lucky and find her."

The lab tech began to input the new parameters into his handheld computer. Within moments, he answered, "This is going to take a while. There were a lot of Resistance areas then, not just bases and hospitals. Some of them were pretty small and mobile and had medics."

"How long a while?" Delphi asked.

The computer dinged again. "Oh, that's odd. Not long at all. Reports indicate that one possible location may have been a hospital in Montana."

That was the first break they'd had since the time wave split into two fractals.

"How'd you get all that that fast?" Delphi wanted to know.

"There's an entry in a Resistance leader's journal. A soldier named Dennis T who was in Idaho. He mentions that the Power Team was intact again but we don't have anything else from entries around that date. Hang on... let me check out hospital records... Aha! There's also a report concerning the Power Team and some people working with them being at the Montana base for several days in July of 2148... there was a patient there they were guarding... female... high security... according to one of the med tech's notes, the female was released into the Power Team's care. A lot of the files are damaged or just gone, but I really don't think if someone who was thought dead was there alive could be kept a secret. Do you want to hear my guess?"

Elias smiled. "Jennifer Chase, only the name on the reports didn't survive all this time."

The tech sighed. "I'm sorry it took so long to find all this information, but trying to gather all the data from an adjacent timeline that's now the current timeline -"

"All of you did a great job," Elias praised him. He double-checked the reading. "Verify the information. We can't do anything unless we know exactly who's where, why and how. See if you can find a physical description, an exact location, absolutely anything. Let's see if this is really her or just a coincidence."

The tech nodded and walked out of the office.

"Looks like we found them," Elias said, his voice betraying his surprise. "Over two hundred years, an adjacent timeline taking dominance, and we pinpoint the day Stuart Power showed up after we lost him. We're good."

"Only if we can adjust the timeline to what it needs to be," Delphi told him as she began to flip through the paperwork, skimming some of the words and phrases. Something caught her attention. "Elias, the reports from the Cyclotron Lab, they said everything was fine with the equipment, right? Nothing out of the ordinary?"

"Right. Why?"

She handed Elias one of the papers. "The date June 14th, 2132 shows up on the database search before we started researching the date to try to save Stuart Power or even began our experiment. There's a record that the search was erased but it wasn't erased from the buffer files. It got printed out on the database search because the text matched the search format."

"And it was done at the Cyclotron Lab?" Elias began to flip through the papers around the one in question. "It was done on the 19th. Wait..." He walked over to the computer and began to pull up planned experiments. "We were doing our joint experiment with Los Alamos that morning way before sunrise only we were focusing on the year 2217... simple experiment, moving something from one day to the next... the primary experiment and our secondary experiment that we think worked," he turned back to the massive amounts of paperwork and flipped through the pages to find the 19th's printout. "You're right, minutes before the experiments, someone at the Cyclotron Lab looked up June 14th, 2132 but - get this - they pinpointed December 25th, 2147." He glanced back at Delphi. "Information's in the buffer because the rest of the information was erased. Look at this... this record indicates a secondary time wave being sent to June 14th, 2132, during our experiment to 2217, and this record shows that someone programmed the computer to split the rescue wave fractal between 2132 and 2147."

When Elias looked at Delphi, she saw that he realized the same thing she did. Fake Brophy Theorem.

There was only one answer: one of their own had targeted Stuart Power, and then when the temporal labs tried to correct it, they assisted the 'anomaly' that also brought Chase forward.

"So it wasn't the Brophy Theorem," she muttered. "Not a real one. And someone was trying to kill Stuart Power. Both times. Maybe they were expecting him to be deconvoluted on the rescue time beam if he wasn't killed on the one that was sent back to destroy him?"

"I don't think we should tell anyone that just yet," Elias suggested. "We need to check it out a little more. Let's get our ducks rowing straight first. We might find out the truth before anyone else does and deal with it ourselves. I'll see who was at the Cyclotron Lab and who could have done this."

Someone messed up the timeline that in turn messed up their mission.

This was quickly becoming personal.

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Sunday**

**July 7, 2148**

**Power Jumpship**

Hawk flew the jumpship back toward the Resistance base, still not believing what had happened.

Jennifer was alive.

Stuart was alive.

Wishes were horses, and beggars were riding. That was certain.

He glanced back into the cabin. Scout was continuing to gather data about the storms that were lessening in intensity. There was absolutely no sign of the tachyons. With Stuart back with them, he could be the lead scientist in figuring out how he and Jennifer were back, and Scout was going to give him every bit of information he could find.

Tank monitored the communications frequencies. There was still nothing on the frequencies about Jennifer being alive and back. That was good. Rumors concerning her were still being spread by mouth and not by mainstream communication networks. They wanted to keep her return as quiet as possible for as long as possible. There was no word that the Power jumpship was in New Mexico, not a peep anywhere that Stuart Power was alive and well and back. Everything that was happening to them was still under everyone's radar, he hoped.

Then there was Jon and Stuart. Although the command cabin of the jumpship was not built for privacy, sounds echoed inside the hull, all mixing together until two people could speak and their voices wouldn't be distinct among the other noises. Taking advantage of this fact, Jon and Stuart sat in the rear of the jumpship, getting reacquainted.

Hawk saw the look in Jon's eyes. It was the same when they found Jennifer. He couldn't believe what he was seeing but he didn't want to disbelieve it. Two of the most important people in his life were back. Alive and well. Breathing. No one wanted to jinx it.

Could their luck be changing for even a mere moment?

**~0~0~0~0~**

"I was moved forward sixteen years?" Stuart mumbled, his voice conveying his disbelief.

"We can't believe it either," Jon told him. "I mean, time travel? It's right out of H.G. Wells."

"It's probably not exactly time travel in the purest sense," Stuart explained. "Your pilot and I maybe have simply moved forward on our own timeline by unknown forces." The tone of his voice sounded speculative rather than sure.

"Dad, I have absolutely no idea what you mean," Jon said, smiling.

"I don't know anything about it myself. I remember reading some studies on the subject when I was in grad school. There were a few scientists delving into temporal physics - Shepard, Messier, Brophy - but there were a lot of theories with no evidence to back them up or proof since temporal physics was all theoretical with absolutely no way to test the hypotheses. The theories ranged all over the place. You could travel back to the time of the dinosaurs; you could go forward as far as you want. Another discussed that traveling like that ripped the space/time continuum and opened up temporal portals randomly. One of the theories stated that a person could only travel to a point on their own timeline because that was their only place in the space/time continuum. You couldn't travel before the date of your birth or after the date of your death. I don't know, Jon. It wasn't my field of expertise. Other than knowing there were people studying temporal physics, I don't know a lot about it. I just remember reading something about it."

Jon leaned forward and said in a low voice, "We need you and Scout and Jennifer to become experts pretty quick. I don't like to think that if someone could move you forward in time, they could move the two of you back."

Stuart nodded, noticing Jon's inclusion of the words _two of you_. He got the distinct impression that this Jennifer Chase wasn't just a team member to his son. "Well, we'll worry about that later. Right now, tell me more about this team you've put together."

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Saturday**

**March 23rd, 2357**

**Cyclotron Laboratories**

Everything that could go wrong was going wrong.

William Custer slammed his fist down on the console. Things were almost as bad as they were in the beginning. Stuart Power was alive. Everything he'd planned was being destroyed.

How hard was it to kill one man?

He had to find a way to kill Stuart Power.

Worse than that, he hadn't counted on Jonathan Power's reaction to having Chase back and the ramifications of inadvertently changing that bit of history.

He pulled out his journal and wrote a few scrambled notes.

_We've gone past confirmation to now having proof. Power's alive. He was sent forward in time by the wave fractal to 2148. The techs can track him between July 4th and July 7th, 2148. They've lost him temporarily but they'll be able to pick up his drecking position in the timeline as soon as the rest of the turbulence settles. The possibility of Power being sent forward that many years and joining the Resistance along with the anomalous occurrence of Chase surviving was unforeseen. If that scenario becomes the new timeline, how will that hinder my plans? Will my family be returned to its prominent position if Power returns at this later date or has his absence those sixteen years created the opportunities necessary for my family to maintain its status?_

With the Cyclotron still being kept offline, he couldn't make any corrections to the timeline. All he could do was research it, find where everyone was at all points on the timeline and then make his move as soon as possible. And despite his position at the Cyclotron lab, he couldn't rev up the Cyclotron whenever he wanted to. Someone at one of the labs would have to request it. Otherwise, there would be no way to do anything quietly, and no one was going to make a temporal experiment until they knew exactly what the target date was and what to do.

And if Power lived...

And if Chase lived...

No, he wouldn't allow that to happen. He would take his rightful position among the elite and powerful as was his birthright.

He tuned his time tracking program to start on July 7th, 2148. If he could just find Stuart Power before anyone else does...

**~0~0~0~0~**

**Jet Propulsion Laboratories**

Delphi Aderholdt read report after report. Every adjacent timeline recorded prior to the Cyclotron shutdown was analyzed and evaluated. She was re-looking for the obvious and trying to overlook the distractions.

To paraphrase one of her more verbally colorful professors, they'd scited up. Big time.

Elias brought in another report. "Temporal disturbance has died down enough to for us to go snipe hunting. We got a hint through temporal triangulation of timeline ripples and those personal journals that the Power Team was at a particular Montana hospital that week in 2148. We were able to backtrack the timeline, use new trackers, and tamp down the actual footprints. Information's solid," he said, sitting down heavily in the chair.

"How solid?" Delphi asked, trying to suppress her excitement.

"Rock solid."

"Give me a recap," Delphi asked as she poured herself and Elias some coffee.

"Kirkland is the name of the doctor that ran the hospital at the Montana base, and we've got the actual geographical coordinates. Chase was there, alive and well. So was Stuart Power. Both of them got sent to July 4th, 2148. Chase was sent to the former JPL site at the San Gabriel Valley, where we rebuilt our JPL labs. Power was sent to Los Alamos after Dread had destroyed the place. It's the exact same geographic location that we rebuilt our Los Alamos Labs. The Power Team found Chase on the 4th, Power on the 7th. We can track them both to this particular Resistance base on the 8th. Specifically. The Power team was there as well."

Delphi laid her head down on her desk and sighed, her hand never leaving her coffee mug.

"You get any sleep?" Elias asked her.

She gripped her coffee mug tighter and pulled it to her. "Yes. I got a few hours and no, you can't take my coffee away from me again." They both smiled. "What about the history? How much has it changed?"

He blew on his coffee to cool it down a little. "Want the good news or the bad news?" Elias asked her.

She raised her head and shrugged. "Dealer's choice. Whichever."

"Good news is that the Resistance still wins the war."

Okay, that was good news. "What's the bad?"

Elias smiled mockingly and sighed. "The Resistance didn't win in the same way or at the same time. Bringing both Chase and Power back altered how it was done. Jonathan Power didn't stay vicious. He didn't keep destroying everything Dreadish in sight. The team's game plan became more meticulous than in the original timeline. More calculated. They had Stuart Power's scientific mind back with them after sixteen years helping them plan missions, and they had Chase back which meant their team was intact again. And let's face it, those five were good together."

Delphi stared at her friend. "And that's bad why?"

Elias showed her a line of data on the report he brought in. "In our new, current timeline, Jonathan Power didn't kill Dread. They were able to take him alive to stand trial, and that was Stuart's idea. The team didn't have to blow up Volcania or wipe out countless outposts, bases or facilities. In short, they didn't eradicate all signs that Dread and Overmind ever existed in the new timeline. They didn't have to because they were able to stop Dread instead of abolishing him. They thought they destroyed Overmind, but all they did was wipe out his main hard drive and most of his programs. Some still existed as viruses and virtual bits of Overmind's personality for decades afterwards. Skirmishes kept on going for a long time. Basically, there was no clean end to the war because it never really ended. A lot more died before it was all over with which means a lot of people who did exist before our experiment started don't exist now."

That wasn't good. "We changed history by changing history because someone changed history," she moaned to herself. "Okay, is it fixable?"

He turned to another page of the report. "One major thing, and you're not going to like it."

Delphi read through the temporal stability report. There was only one way to utterly destroy Dread and wipe out all evidence of his existence. "It's possible that Stuart Power could stay in 2148 and get the same results, but Chase has to die in order to turn Power into an angry man," she concluded. "They've got her back now. If she were to die after they found her, what's the outcome?"

Again, Elias showed Delphi a particular part of the report. "It was losing her that turned him into a tougher soldier. According to the new information, our psychologists are thinking he could lose her after finding her and the timeline will reflect the original more. It won't be raw anger over losing her like in the original timeline. It's pure grief. He'll destroy everything that has to do with Dread including Dread himself and Overmind will be history."

"Then how would bringing Stuart Power back sixteen years later affect a non-change on the timeline?"

Elias shook his head. "Stuart Power being there is how it should have been in the first place, and we're correcting that problem but sixteen years from where he ought to be? We don't know yet. Chase was supposed to die in the Power Base explosion. We can't undo the time wave's split between the two explosions due to the temporal instability that would cause right now, but if we could still remove Chase from the equation..."

Delphi knew what Elias didn't want to say.

"I hate this," she said. "One person can make such a difference. We've seen it countless times, but Chase was the difference for Power. He gave up so much to fight that war, and here we sit casually commenting on the fact that if he doesn't lose Chase, then we lose the world he liberated for us."

Elias sat back. "We would not be working here today if everything that Dread built wasn't torn down. Everything had to be rebuilt. Overmind had to be completely wiped out so he couldn't take over computer systems again and that meant destroying every computer system on the planet because he had grown to be a bunch of programs all over the web. Our computer systems wouldn't have been built if any of Overmind's systems still existed because they would have taken over anything built after the fact. All biomechs had to be destroyed, not just dismantled because there were some people out there who were always loyal to Dread and his Empire and would get the biomechs working again. They would have used any of Dread's facilities as a base of operations if they had been completely destroyed by the Resistance. All that hinged on the fact that Captain Power practically went rabid when he lost Jennifer Chase. Not losing her, that changed a lot down the timeline."

Delphi thought through all the scenarios she could, all the possibilities. "So we have to get Power to destroy Dread and Overmind, not just capture them in the new timeline. Which, of course, changes the timeline again. It does lend credence to the theory that in the original timeline, he was a grief stricken man who lost the love of his life and took it out on Dread. Any idea how we can do that?"

"That's above my pay grade," Elias explained, a slight smile on his face. "I know what the Temporal Administrative Council will want to do, but I'm not agreeing with it."

"They'll probably want to remove Chase," she concluded. "And make it look like Dread was behind it."

"That would put Jonathan Power back on track, but he'll lose her," he sighed.

She noticed a slight glint in her friend's eye. "Elias, you're up to something. You've got something in mind?" she wanted to know.

"What makes you think I do?"

"Because I've known you for years and you love to pull all kinds of shenanigans," she remarked. "Besides, I know how sneaky you can be when you put your mind to it. What are you thinking?"

"Can't we get a message to Power somehow? Keep Chase alive? Tell him that he has to destroy everything to do with Dread and Overmind or the future is at risk?"

She almost laughed. "Then we'd have to explain time travel," she pointed out.

"What makes you think they're not already thinking that?" Elias countered. "They were a pretty smart group. If we can get a message to them -"

"Maybe have the best of all possible worlds?" She considered it. "You know, when I was a little girl, I loved hearing the stories about the Power Team, about how they would swoop in and win no matter what the odds. Then there were all those myths behind what happened at the base. The idea that Chase died protecting the Resistance and stopping a biodread has been one of the most researched theories from the Badderdays. Just once, I'd like for this story to have a happy ending."

"What do you want to do?" Elias wanted to know.

What to do, what to do... Delphi knew they had few choices. "Who'd you have for temporal physics at the Academy? Brewster? Shannon?"

"Gilbert," Elias answered. "Why?"

"I had Chesling. He was about five years from retirement when I took his class, but he would address each physics class with this analogy -"

"About the dominos?" Elias interrupted. "I heard about that. If one domino doesn't fall, it could change everything, right?"

"If Power were to lose Chase... Elias, this is one domino I don't want to see fall."

Elias sighed. "Me either."

"Do we have Jillian's latest updates?"

Elias pointed to a particular report. "Right there on top. She sent them over just before I came in here."

"Okay. We send our findings, our conclusions, and our recommendations to the Temporal Administrative Council. They'll have to decide on the next step." She took a deep breath. "And if they choose the wrong step, maybe we need to have a Plan B." She paused, then, "Anything new on the information from the Cyclotron Lab?"

"I looked through some pretty well-hidden-in-plain-sight information on the paperwork. I also checked the logs. Turns out a Doctor William Custer was the only one on duty that night at the lab, and he logged in to the system prior to any of this starting. I checked into his personnel records as much as I could. He's one of the pencil-pushing scientists at the lab. He does reports. Lots of them. He cranks up the Cyclotron whenever we get ready to do a temporal experiment -"

"He's a cyclotech?" Delphi asked. "One of those techs wouldn't have the expertise to preprogram it to split a wave fractal, would they?"

Elias cleared his throat. "Custer might. He's not a tech. He's a temporal engineer. He graduated top of his class, the only reason he's at that lab and not one of the scientists here is that he's not into research. He's more comfortable around machinery and paperwork. I'll check out more of his background so we can either clear him or accuse him."

"Let's keep this part of the problem quiet. I'm not going to destroy a fellow scientist's career on mere speculation and coincidence," Delphi said. "I want proof."

"I'll go digging," Elias told her. "About time I got my hands dirty in all this.


	8. Chapter 8

**Sunday**

**July 7th, 2148**

**Resistance Hospital**

Jennifer continued to peruse the data Scout had gathered, noting the dates of each file, still marveling at the fact months had passed that she had not been there to experience. It just didn't feel like time had passed to her! It was frustrating to such a degree that she had to keep reminding herself that it was July. July 2148. July 7th, 2148, to be exact.

What's more, she had missed the Fourth that year. That meant she didn't get to hear the stories of previous Fourth of Julys that the team would tell so they could play a game of 'holiday one-upsmanship' with each other. Sometimes, they would talk about things she had no understanding of or reference for, but that didn't make it any less enjoyable. Her boys would get this happy look on their faces when they reminisced about the past, and those happy looks were few and far between. Maybe she could get them to tell her the stories even though the Fourth was over with?

She shook her head and refocused on the reader. Fourth of July stories could wait until later. "Okay... let's see... storms coming on a schedule... tachyons only in the storm when all the little storms joined together... storm strength increasing over the week..."

Lots of information, nothing much more than what Scout had detailed for her - wait, something strange...

She punched a few buttons on the reader and scanned certain information picked up by the ship's sensors. Molecules in the storm were traveling in the same direction... in the same direction as the tachyon particles presumably. Molecules moving in the same direction... Jennifer envisioned a magnet. There was a north end and a south end to a bar magnet, the molecules moved from north to south which magnetized the metal. Opposite ends attracted, same ends repelled. Could moving something through time require a 'north' end and a 'south' end for the object to travel across? It would mean a beginning and ending destination, and maybe the tachyon particles moved along that distance? Was that possible? She had no idea. She was guessing, and she knew it. Scout was undoubtedly doing the same thing.

Then there were the storms occurring at regular intervals. She had no guess. It wasn't just 'how' it was happening; it was 'why' it was happening and who could be behind it all. If the tachyons were proof of time travel, then could the storms also be connected to time travel somehow? It stormed for an hour, then stopped for an hour, almost down to the minute. What else was there that had that steady of a tempo that she could use for comparison? Heartbeats were steady. Pulses were steady. Metronomes... she pushed that idea aside. This was something natural, not mechanical, right?

There was a knock on the door. "Come in," Jennifer called out.

Doctor Kirkland walked in, a smile on her face. "Looks like I came at a good time. Everyone else has cleared out. How do you feel?" she asked Jennifer.

Jennifer looked at her, her eyes indicating her annoyance. "Do you have any idea how many people have asked me that question in the last few hours?"

Kirkland started counting on her fingers. "Three, four five... my guess?"

"Everybody who's walked in that door," Jennifer said jokingly. "Every single one of your medics that have come in here to run tests on me asks me the same thing."

Kirkland smiled. "I'm sorry, but the fact you're alive and well and here is a bit of a surprise."

"Right," Jennifer moved slightly to find a more comfortable position and she put down the reader. "I guess I'm still a bit of a novelty."

"A novelty as far as the fact you're here? Yes, but not to me or your team or a few select others working on this ward. No one outside this hospital knows exactly where you are, but news of your being alive is everywhere. I think all the Resistance personnel that's been coming through here is taking the story out with them. Cypher, Elzer Pulaski and Dennis T were here when your ship landed. I have no doubt they're already telling anyone in earshot that you're alive. The story that's been circulating is that you were captured and your team finally rescued you. That seems to be satisfying most everyone's curiosity. But you know how stories and rumors start. They're making up their own versions of how it happened."

Jennifer hadn't considered rumors. Months had passed, but to her, it had only been a day or two. How was she supposed to react to all that? How was she supposed to react to any of it? And Elzer Pulaski? Cypher? Dennis T? She'd never even met Dennis T. They were curious too? One part of her kept wondering why anyone would wonder about her since it'd only been a few days since she battled Blastarr, but then she reminded herself that it was months earlier and everyone thought she was dead. "That's the most popular rumor?" she asked.

"It was this morning. This evening? Who knows?"

"A good cover story," Jennifer admitted.

Kirkland sat down and looked at her patient. "Good enough for now. But what about my question? How do you feel?"

Jennifer frowned. "I keep taking short naps because I'm tired and everything hurts."

"I had to do some major surgery on you. The regenerator helped a lot, but you've got a lot of healing still to do. Don't worry, you can get up and walk around as soon as you want, but a few more days in the regenerator should fix you up pretty well. You don't have to lie here in pain. I can get you -"

"No," Jennifer shook her head. "Those drugs make me feel like I'm moving through quicksand, and I've got some research to do."

No doctor could argue with that. Too many of their drugs lacked finesse. Many were crude, but it was all they had. And since Jennifer was a very stubborn soldier, she'd say to keep the drugs for someone who really needs them. She could handle the pain. "I may have some aspirin in a first aid kit."

Jennifer smiled at her. "I'll remember that if I need it."

"Well, I've got some good news. The jumpship is on its way back. Should be here in a couple of hours. Hawk said he had a surprise for you."

Jennifer smiled at that thought. As happy as she was that the team was heading back, once again she had to remember that it had been months for them since they were separated. The four of them had been operating on their own without her. Was she going to be a fifth wheel? That was a thought she didn't want to entertain. What if they weren't what she remembered the team being? One thing about the Power Team, they were always stronger together, but more than that, they were five friends who actually enjoyed each other's company. Five parts of a whole that added up to more than the sum of its parts. What if all that was different? What if they were now four parts to the whole and not five? Her smile faltered.

"Everything's going to be okay," Kirkland told her. "I know you have to feel like you've fallen through the rabbit hole, but the way those guys worried about you... I know everything's going to be fine."

Jennifer hoped she was right. Then she wondered what Kirkland meant when she said the 'rabbit hole.'

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Saturday**

**March 23rd, 2357**

**Jet Propulsion Laboratories**

In the privacy of his office, Elias Pitcairn was about to do something that could cost him his job if he was discovered. Not like anything like that ever scared him. What fun was life if no one ever took a risk?

He first opened up the personnel files and broke through the security on the confidential comments written in the files by superiors. Maybe that was one way to figure out more about William Custer.

"Okay, William Custer, let's see what others think of you..." Elias re-read his personnel file, found a somewhat innocuous, steadily promoted scientist. Nothing really big stood out other than the fact the guy loved paperwork.

Nothing really big...

That got Elias' attention. How many people in any work setting didn't have some kind of write-up somewhere? How scited up was that? Okay, so not everyone was as prone to harmless disruptions as he was or were as independently thinking as he was, but at some point, wouldn't someone make some boss angry?

Custer's file was spotless.

That meant one thing to Elias - it was a fake. Either it was faked or someone had hacked into the personnel database and cleaned it up or removed any negative comments. Either way, it wasn't the truth.

So where else was information about Custer? And if his personnel file was incorrect in any way, could he not be Custer?

Quickly and without the slightest hesitation, Elias brought up the medical files. He easily bypassed the security systems with a 'borrowed' ident and password. "Child's play," he muttered to himself. He brought up William Custer's file... again, it was too clean. It was as if someone had written it up with all the 'right' answers.

There was nothing conspicuous about it.

"All right... let's look a little deeper."

He looked at the DNA records. "DNA doesn't lie or so the old saying goes," he muttered to himself. The DNA database was the most private and guarded database in existence. Everything from illegal cloning to identity theft had once ran rampant when DNA was the personal identification for people. Oddly enough, it was certain bits of technology the Power Team developed that used DNA coded security that inspired a worldwide use of the system. Sure, it worked in some ways, was a nightmare in others, but it was the way of the world at the moment. That meant it was zealously guarded by the security systems to keep people from doing what Elias was doing at that moment.

He found William Custer's DNA in the medical files and ran it through the actual DNA database so 'carefully' guarded by the government. Elias almost laughed at the ease with which he traipsed right into the government's database. More child's play for a gifted scientist like himself...

According to the personnel files, Custer claimed a possible relationship to a General George Armstrong Custer and Libby Custer. George Armstrong Custer... that name sounded familiar. Something was nudging his memory from his history class... he took a moment to look up the name and only had to read the first few lines of text to jog his memory. Right. Custer was a West Point graduate, fought for the Union during the Civil War in America, was at the Battle of Gettysburg, was at Appomattox when General Lee surrendered and was killed at the Battle of Little Big Horn. It seemed he was best known for leading the 7th Cavalry into Little Big Horn. In fact, there was a rather odd comment that many people were only aware of his involvement at Little Big Horn and nothing else. Odd. That was a type of historical obscurity, only being known for one thing when the person did many things. Then Elias saw the phrase that he did remember from his history classes - Custer's Last Stand. All right... memory jogged... he remembered who General Custer was. Next, he looked up the Custer family DNA histories for comparison.

Surprise, surprise, the DNA didn't match the general's or his wife's?

He quickly researched the various Custer family bloodlines. Custer and his wife didn't have any children? Okay, what about a Custer relative? Elias pulled up any and all information on the general's relatives. William Custer's DNA didn't match any of it.

He wasn't really a Custer or at least not someone physically descended from George Armstrong Custer.

Now Elias was getting somewhere!

Okay, so it didn't mean much. One of his forebearers could have been adopted. That would have explained the lack of matching DNA. Family stories sometimes lost a lot of details generation to generation. But this bit of information gave Elias another avenue to start looking in.

He brought up William Custer's DNA strand again and began to run computer analyses with other records for similar family groupings along with the mitochondrial DNA code present in the strands until he located the particular grouping that matched the lab's file for William Custer, only the name William Custer wasn't listed within that particular DNA grouping. There were a lot of other names listed however. Elias went through each one, verifying employment, location, general description until he came to one that wasn't anywhere to be found on any search.

Elias mumbled to himself, "Byron Micklon? Let's run with that. Okay, if that's his real name, then who is he?"

He began to run background and criminal checks on the name Byron Micklon. Nothing came up. There were no school records, birth records, domicile location records...

That didn't make any sense. How was the name even in the system if there were no other records...

The buffer? That was how they found his search for the date of June 14th, 2132. He double-checked the name Byron Micklon... yep, the name and histories were in the buffer and hadn't ever been permanently erased from the government files. Someone had removed him from any and all records except they couldn't delete all the information in the buffer. Then again, the government never did run deletions on the buffer. It was too easy to lose good information and need to dredge it up from the buffer.

So if this Micklon wasn't a criminal, then why was he hiding his identity if that's what he was really doing?

"Think, Elias, think," he muttered to himself. "Why hide who you are?" He considered the question, and one answer bubbled to the top of his thoughts. "Maybe he's hiding where he came from, not exactly who he is."

He began to trace the DNA strand again until he found the particular descendency to track back through on both the father and mother's side. It was boring, painstaking work, but Elias kept looking, back through the forebearers, going back ten generations.

It was when he found the tenth generation that he stopped.

Elias stared at the computer screen, not believing what he was seeing. He reran the DNA; he rechecked the names list. This couldn't be right.

He reran the mitochondrial DNA again, tracing it through the ten generations...

It was true. DNA didn't lie.

"Oh, Delphi and Jillian are not going to like this," he said. "But that explains a lot."

**~0~0~0~0~**

**Temporal Administrative Council**

The Temporal Administrative Council sat in their usual positions as they debated the information before them. It was getting louder and louder in that room. AdministratorEileen Collier glanced around the room. Everyone was definitely and loudly present. Professor Edward Reichardt, Doctor Diane Stabler, Councilor Arthur Reutiman, Councilor Ernest Bryan, Professor Sonja Edgars and Councilor Arthur Fowler each tried to out-shout the others until Collier called everyone to order. "Now, has everyone read all the reports forwarded from Doctor Aderholdt and Doctor Barrett over the last few hours?"

She was greeted with nodding heads and comments of affirmation.

"How could this get so scited up?" Reichardt asked. "The job was to salvage only Stuart Power."

Stabler pushed a pile of papers toward Reichardt. "Early reports said that the Brophy Theorem happened. Only I guess we can call it Brophy's Law since it's been proven. But it doesn't matter. It's happened, and we've got to decide what to do about it. Do we try to alter the situation or let it continue on as is? Do we run the chance of making it worse if we interfere?"

"I see no reason for debate," Reutiman added. "Stuart Power is alive and in 2148. Searches are showing that the timeline will mirror the original and our civilization would be saved. However, there's the problem with Jennifer Chase. Captain Jonathan Power has to destroy everything that once belonged to Dread and Overmind in order for civilization to rebuild itself without the threat of those loyal to Dread attempting another takeover. We can make certain that the outcome of the original timeline still takes place. Captain Power must lead the Resistance teams on an all-out assault on Dread's forces. Every computer system on the planet has to be destroyed because Overmind hid parts of his programs in every server and backup drive. He could take over at any time if the world is not completely decomputerized before society rebuilds them. The only way our research shows us that can happen is if Chase is dead and Jonathan Power becomes a killer due to the anger over her death. They have her back, then she must die and it has to look like it was Dread's doing to create a need for vengeance in Power."

Edgars argued his point. "I disagree. There's no guarantee that removing Jennifer Chase at that point would create the Jonathan Power we know from history. More research needs to be done on the succeeding timeline. It could be that -"

"No, there's no guarantee but research has been done," Fowler argued. "Power doesn't annihilate Dread in the new timeline. He does stop him, he does dismantle his Empire but he doesn't utterly wipe it off the face of the planet."

"And that means our world has changed. Too much won't exist if the timeline cements itself as the newly established timeline," Reutiman continued.

"But time's fluid," Bryan interrupted. "We can change a timeline even if it has been cemented as the new timeline. It's possible we could stop the time fractal from reaching Chase at the Power Base at the time of its destruction."

Stabler disagreed. "That would make it worse. It'd be like churning up water in already churned up water. The ripples in the time wave haven't solidified yet, and anything we do at this point could have a negative effect. Trying to remove her at a later date, that's doable but only slightly less dangerous."

Collier called for attention. "All right, we've all read the reports; we know what's at stake. The question is what to do about it. I think we're all agreed that keeping Stuart Power in 2148 is the least risky decision, but do we remove Chase and have it blamed on Dread or do we let well enough alone and deal with the new reality?"

Reichardt stood up. "Stuart Power has been salvaged. That was mandatory. Chase's return is detrimental to the timeline. She must be removed." Then he sat down.

Stabler stood as soon as Reichardt sat. "We've interfered in history too much as it is. We risk too much if we try to alter it any more. I say we do nothing."

Reutiman took his turn to speak. "Chase has to be removed."

Edgars stood, almost daring Reutiman to interrupt him. "We don't know enough of the changes. If we do something that turns out to be irrevocable, we'll make things worse. More study needs to be done."

Fowler waited a moment, choosing his words carefully before speaking. "As much as I hate to vote this way, we must have Dread destroyed utterly and Overmind completely wiped out. Too much of the future depends on that one fact. Whatever is necessary to see that happen must be undertaken."

Bryan, the calm thinker of the group, suggested, "I see no reason for Chase to die. Regardless of our position as the caretakers of history, if we go back with the purpose of killing her, then we are murderers. Worse than Dread himself. I will have no part of that. If this Council decides that she must be removed, then I suggest we move her to a new time in the future, beyond the life span of the Power Team. We can research the most likely temporal area that her presence would have very little impact on, where she can live out her life in relative obscurity but in safety. All we have to do is make it look like Dread killed her, but we don't have to pull the trigger."

Collier's eyebrows raised at the suggestion. Instead of killing Chase, they could order her removal by sending her to another time? That could be a viable option.

"It stands at three to three: three to kill her, two to wait and one to remove her to another time. It looks like I'm the swing vote." Collier thought through the massive amount of information they had. "We see history with the convenience of hindsight, but we look at it with modern eyes," she muttered as she considered her options. "We must err on the side of caution, but I see no reason to become killers. I like the idea of making them _think_ that one of Dread's soldiers killed Chase when, in actuality, we move her to a future time to be determined by the scientists at JPL and Los Alamos."

"How will we do that exactly?" Reichardt asked her. "History tells us that Dread soldiers had a certain look but what that look is, we don't know. We can't send someone back in time, do the job and then bring them back in an efficient amount of time without risk of being discovered. Besides, time traveling one of our people is just risky enough for us to not try that on such a serious moment. We don't have enough experience, and we have to get this right on the first try."

Collier shook her head. "No, we can't, but we do have the technology to send an intelligent short-term corporeal hologram back. Ironically enough, this technology came from Stuart Power's research on Mentor."

"A corporeal hologram?" Stabler asked. "I'm not read in on that technology."

Collier nodded her head in understanding. "I'm not surprised. It was a somewhat classified short-lived undertaking that proved to be inefficient with our current equipment. The holographic programs conflicted with the Cyclotron and the holograms were unstable, so the research was abandoned. Very few even know about it."

"What was the problem?" Reichardt wanted to know.

"My guess? Those holograms were meant to last hours. That meant a continual opening in the time corridor that had to be maintained for the length of the hologram's mission. Keeping the time corridor open is too dangerous to the continuum. That's why that research was abandoned and we use time waves to go to a specific point in time. It makes less interference. Now, in theory, we should be able to send back a solid preprogrammed hologram, literally a hologram with a physical presence and a single-purpose program. It should be simple enough for our scientists to program the hologram to immediately scan recordings and frequencies to learn what the Dread Youth looked like and adopt their physical appearance. As soon as the hologram is in proximity to the target, it could utilize a preprogrammed holographic projection to make everyone think he's killed Chase and destroyed the body, only we temporally move her at that exact moment. It should be easy enough because, theoretically, power from the Cyclotron can be cycled through the hologram. Witnesses observing the event will think that one of Dread's soldiers is guilty of a murder. We may even have to make the hologram appear to be killed if people there decide to get revenge. However, that should suffice in angering Captain Power. The connection between our time and 2148 would only be a matter of minutes, and the risk of temporal interference from an open time corridor should be minimized. Is that acceptable to everyone?"

Moving was preferable to killing. None of the members of the administration were evil, but they were practical, powerful and selfish. They didn't want to have their world destroyed. Besides, Chase was supposed to have died in the explosion. They would just be putting history to right.

"If it fails?" Reichardt asked. "We've had limited success moving an object temporally. There's still research being done on the method."

Collier looked at her colleague. "If we cannot do this, if we have no chance of success with this plan, we will have to kill Chase. We will agree that _that_ option is the last option, to be used only as a last resort. Agreed?"

Not a perfect solution, but a solution nonetheless. One that did not make them worse than Dread but would assure their world would survive.

"Then we shall send our recommendations to both Aderholdt and Barrett and let them start working up the numbers. We'll have them report to us tomorrow with the results."

Sometimes, being a temporal administrator meant making the hard choices that kept them up at nights.


	9. Chapter 9

**Sunday**

**July 7th, 2148**

**Resistance Base**

The day had moved past afternoon; it was getting further into evening.

Gray skies and polluted clouds overhead, no bright sunlight to speak of, and Montana looked nothing like Stuart remembered it. Gone was the endless blue canvas overheard in Big Sky Country. Gone were the trees and the lakes. All that once was green and growing was gone. It was a barren land. Was the rest of the country like Montana? Was the rest of the planet?

Matt landed the jumpship outside the Montana base, and several people moved toward them. Obviously, there was business that needed to be attended to. 'Business' in this new world Stuart had woken up in seemed to be done in a purely survivalist mode. He knew Lyman was out to take over the world, but Dread destroyed everything? He hadn't seen that coming.

"Think she's awake?" Scout asked Jon in a low voice. "I really want to talk about some of this data with her."

Jon laughed. "You know Jennifer. She'll have been poring over that other information you gave her and been trying to figure out what happened since we left."

Another voice called from across the landing bay. "Captain Power? A word?"

Stuart watched his son walk over toward the man who called his name. Whoever he was, he was someone of some importance.

Everything was happening fast around him, and Stuart needed to take a moment to catch his breath. Everything was different from anything he knew.

"He's the base administrator," Matt explained as he walked over to Stuart, pointing out the man Jon was speaking with. "His name's Conway. He's the one who established this base about ten years ago. We helped where we could, but things were tough then. Resistance wasn't even a unified force at the time. People were looting, killing, it was anarchy. Conway and others like him were able to create small pockets of civilization to remind people that we're still human, that we could survive and not become animals. It's been a joint effort by a lot of people to even get this far."

Stuart blew out a breath. "Anarchy?"

"Never expected anything like this?"

This? Matt had mentioned they were returning to a hospital at a resistance base, but what Stuart saw when he looked around was much more. It was a refugee camp, a resistance base, a trading post, a school, an orphanage - it was the last vestiges of a devastated civilization trying to rebuild. Stuart shook his head in disgust. "I never dreamed it would get this bad. Lyman did all this?"

"No," Matt explained quickly. He pointed toward the outside, to the wastelands. "Dread did all that. What you see here, people did all this. Survivors who aren't willing to give up. We help out where we can, they help us in the war. We're still fighting."

"I keep hearing about this Dread character. Who is he?"

Matt looked at Stuart like he'd just grown another head. "Stuart, Dread is Taggart. It's the name Taggart uses these days. You didn't know?"

Stuart blew out another breath and shook his head. "No. All I've heard about is Lord Dread and the Machines. I haven't heard the name Taggart since I showed up at Los Alamos. I knew Lyman was power hungry, but this? He's reduced the world to some post-apocalyptic No Man's Land."

"It's more than that," Matt continued. "After the explosion at Volcania, Taggart was hurt pretty badly. Overmind sort of healed him up by making him part machine and part human. He was like that for fifteen years while he perfected the transference technology."

That was a new phrase. "Transference technology? What's that?"

Matt took a deep breath and glanced around at the people milling about. "His big plan? To transfer human minds into metalloid bodies?"

"He's still under that delusion? Why? He has to know that you can't put something alive into something dead like a robot."

"He's done it, Stuart," Matt contradicted him. "The day we lost the Colorado base, he transferred his mind into a metalloid body. He's a biodread now."

A biodread? "Unbelievable," Stuart muttered. "He's taken that technology to a level I never would have considered viable." He glanced around at their location, his eyes taking in every scene. "Are there a lot of bases like this?"

"All over the continent. Some aren't nearly this well-off. Others are almost like small towns. This one has a first-rate hospital and we know the doctor. She's helped us out a lot of times in the past. We don't really know what the conditions are like overseas. We hear rumors that some countries are worse off than we are. Some are rebuilding. Some don't exist anymore."

"They don't exist?" How could Lyman have destroyed land masses?

"Some were bombed into the sea. Some landed areas were stripped of all their resources and then Dread burned whatever was left. The human population is maybe 25% of what it was sixteen years ago."

That much lost? Stuart couldn't imagine that kind of destruction, not yet. But there, in that place, he saw the hope of the human race. People weren't giving up. They were fighting.

More people walked up to the jumpship to speak to the rest of the team. Stuart overheard Tank speaking with the landing bay commander about Intel newcomers were bringing in. Scout was walking over to join him. Jon was still speaking with the administrator, a concerned look in his eyes. Stuart realized that his son and his team truly bore the weight of the world on their shoulders, whether literally or figuratively.

Matt explained what was going on. "I think it'll be a few minutes before we can go into the hospital. Something's going on."

Scout moved back towards Matt and Stuart to update them on the latest Intel. "They've been getting reports that these storms are keeping Dread's forces out of the affected areas so a lot of people in that region of the wastelands are relocating to some safer areas while they've got a safe passage. They're asking any Resistance troops on the West Coast to be on standby in case the refugees need help moving. Administrator's telling the captain the finer details."

Matt motioned toward the ship. "We'll need to restock then. We're running low on stores, and we might as well restock on ammo."

"I'm on it," Scout said as he walked over to the quartermaster's office.

Stuart tried to process everything he was seeing and hearing. This reality was completely different from the one he knew. His son was speaking with other individuals who held the air of authority. He heard names mentioned in the conversations, a few words peppered in here and there. Some resistance leaders were already helping some of the refugees relocate... someone called Freedom Two and Cypher and Dennis T... wait, Dennis T? Could it be? Dennis always did walk his own path and didn't get along with the rest of his family because of it. Dennis always wanted to stay in the background, an obscure footnote to a rather powerful family. He didn't even want to use their surname. Although, given his family, Stuart couldn't blame him. He considered the world that he had been tossed into once again. Was it any wonder that people were so different from what they used to be? War and death and deprivation had stripped people down to their true selves, Dennis included.

"Matt, Dennis T? Is that the Dennis we know?"

Matt nodded his head. "He's leading the Idaho Resistance these days. He keeps a very low profile. He rarely talks to any of us who knew him before including Jon these days. He doesn't want anyone making any connections about who he used to be and who he is today."

Stuart let his attention wander back to his son, a man who was now a stranger to him. "Tell me, given how I'm seeing people act toward Jon, how they speak to him, how pivotal is he in the war against Dread?"

"He's the main reason we still have humans living out here," Matt corrected him. "Dread would have destroyed everyone by now if Jon hadn't stood in his way all these years."

Jon was the immovable object to Lyman's irresistible force. There had to be a very long story leading up to that, one that he'd learn eventually. There was so much he had to know. "So why is Lyman called Dread?"

"Lord Dread," Matt said with a scowl. "I'm not really sure. He started calling himself that after he became half-machine. Thousands of Dread Youth were taught to call him that, even Overmind calls him -"

"Wait, Dread Youth?" That was another term Stuart didn't recognize.

Matt sighed. "Oh, right. There are a lot of things we'll have to catch you up on. Basically, Dread had children raised to be his soldiers. Orphans, sons and daughters of those loyal to him, the ones he could find or take or steal, they were trained to want to place their minds into metal bodies and be Dread's foot soldiers. Most of them aren't even aware that they have a choice. We didn't know how bad it was until we found Jennifer."

"She was one of Dread's soldiers?"

"A youth leader until she saw the truth of it all," Matt told him. "Then she did the one thing no other Dread Youth had ever done. She escaped. We found her and it didn't take us long to realize she was perfect for this team." He nodded his head toward Jon. "Perfect for him, too."

Stuart looked toward his son. The look in Jon's eyes was one Stuart had never seen in the teenager he had been. There was a darker desperation, a subdued anger that seemed to radiate from his eyes. "Tell me about him. What's he like now? I don't even know my own son."

"You'll be proud of him, Stuart. He's done things neither one of us would have imagined him doing. He's taken the power suits and made them do things I don't think you even had on the drawing board. He knows them so well that he re-designed one for Jennifer. Turns out all the suits you designed were a little too big for her to wear."

Stuart smiled. "He figured out the suits," he commented. "I knew he would." He thought that was a good time to change the subject. "I've noticed a few distinct verbal clues since you picked me at Los Alamos. Am I right in saying there's something special between him and this Jennifer?"

Matt smiled. "There can be now that she's alive. It's another long story, Stuart."

It seemed there were a lot of long stories for him to catch up on. "What's the condensed version?"

Matt laughed. "Believe me, there's no way to condense their story. You'll have to hear it all."

"From what I gathered, you thought she was dead and found her the same way you found me?"

"More or less."

Something that Jon said was beginning to make sense to Stuart. "Jon is worried that if we could be brought here from another time, then we could be taken someplace else in time."

Matt frowned, his brow furrowing. "I hadn't thought of that." His eyes tracked toward Jon. "We have to make sure that doesn't happen. I don't think this team would survive his losing her again."

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Saturday**

**March 23rd, 2357**

**Jet Propulsion Laboratories**

Delphi held the Council's decision in one hand and tapped the fingers of her other hand on the table as she waited for Jillian to appear on the monitor.

Elias was fuming. "What's taking so long?"

"Just wait," Delphi said. "You know she's hurrying." She noticed the disk Elias had in his hand. "What's that?"

"Proof," he told her. "I just want to tell you both together."

Finally, their patience was rewarded when the vid-link connected.

"_Sorry,"_ Jillian was out of breath. _"I had to get to a secure location, and my lab doesn't have a lot of those. What do we have new?"_

Delphi sighed angrily. "The response from the Temporal Administrative Council."

"_I just got it, but I haven't had time to read it yet. I take it we don't like their decision?"_

Delphi cleared her throat and read the results aloud.

"Temporal Council Decision regarding disposition of Corporal Jennifer Chase, circa 2148. After careful consideration, it has been decided by a four to three vote that Corporal Jennifer Chase should be located as close to transfer date July 4th, 2148, and moved to a temporal/geophysical location beyond the lifespan of the Power Team that will not interfere with newly established history. This correction should be made forthwith, all timelines taken into consideration, via the solid hologram program."

There was silence for a moment, then over that vid-link came some rather angry viewpoints.

"_Please don't tell me that says what I know it says. They can't be serious."_

"They want to move her," Elias grumbled. "Not a word about Stuart Power, but they want to take her away from Jonathan Power. Move her to some point into the future. I read the minutes of the meeting the Council had. They really have no idea what they're doing."

"There must be something we can do," Delphi mumbled aloud.

"_What can we do?"_ Jillian asked. _"The Council is the authority in these matters."_

"Plan B," Elias said suddenly.

Delphi turned in her seat to look at her friend. She could sense that Jillian was just as confused as she was. "You've worked out a Plan B?"

"Just now I have," was his self-confident answer. "The solid hologram program! I'd forgotten about that one. I mean, it didn't work before, but it'd work for us now. Add that in with our secondary experiment we did to 2217 - it's perfect! Oh, we also have a problem." He brought out a personnel file. "Doctor William Custer. Do you know him?"

Jillian frowned slightly. _"In some respects. He's at the Cyclotron Laboratory. I've seen his name on a lot of the paperwork. Why?"_

"It looks like he was the one who originally targeted Stuart Power for death and then preprogrammed the Cyclotron to split the wave fractal when we followed up with a temporal jump to 2132 to also hit 2148," Delphi added.

"_Wait, he altered time? That's a serious charge,"_ Jillian cautioned them. _"And he duplicated a Brophy Theorem? I didn't know that was possible. Do you have proof or just coincidences?"_

"Some sciting odd coincidences if that was all they were, but there's some harder evidence," Elias explained quickly "And I think I just found out why he did all this if he did do all this." He put the disk into the computer and pulled up a file on the monitor so everyone could see it. "I did a personnel background check and employment history on him. The paperwork was way past perfect. Not a single flaw anywhere. I had to go back to the DNA medical databases to confirm it -"

"You broke into the medical database?" Delphi asked. "That could cost you your job and your degree, Elias."

"It's only illegal if I get caught," he protested before Jillian could say anything. "The DNA on file doesn't match the Custer family bloodline which, get this, is only available through George Armstrong Custer's brothers. As far as we know, Custer didn't father any children with his wife Libby. Other children were said to be Custer's offspring. Their mother was a woman named Monahsetah whom he 'unofficially' married, but there's some historical dispute about that. Some historians said Custer was sterile and his brother Thomas may have fathered the children. Who knows. But here's what I found out. His real name isn't William Custer. He's a temporal engineer, he did graduate top of his class but his real name is Byron Micklon."

Both ladies shrugged.

"You wouldn't know the name Micklon. I traced the family back over two hundred years, male and female lines. Tracking it back, it's now Micklon who was descended from a Wiseling who was descended from a Pierman who was descended from a Harrigan who was descended from -"

"We get it, Elias," Delphi said. "It's the begats in reverse. Where does this list start?"

Elias cleared his throat. "It tracks back to a man named Dennis Taggart."

That got their attention.

"_Taggart?"_ Jillian asked. _"As in -"_

"As in Lyman Taggart. Same family. I looked into the Taggart history starting with Dread himself. Some stories say that Dennis was Lyman Taggart's son and named for his younger brother, but there's no evidence that Lyman fathered any children before or after he joined up with Overmind. We do know that he had a brother named Dennis, and this younger brother disappeared for a while. There's some evidence that he may have been in charge of a small Resistance cell -"

"Wait," Delphi interrupted. "Dennis Taggart? Didn't our tech tell us that about a journal entry from a Resistance leader named Dennis T? Idaho, I think? He wrote something about the Power Team being intact in 2148?"

Elias thought for a moment, then nodded. "Dread's brother a Resistance leader? Bet that made for interesting conversation around the dinner table."

"_Only if anyone knew,"_ Jillian added.

Elias continued. "Whether Dennis Taggart was Dennis T... who knows. Right now, it's all speculation. Anyway, Micklon's a direct descendent of a man named Dennis Taggart, and if that's the younger brother, then he's related to Lyman Taggart, Dread himself."

"I wonder what he's up to," Delphi asked. "If he changes history, then all this ceases to exist."

"It gets worse. I looked through the adjacent timeline research that was performed before we took the Cyclotron offline. The Taggart family would be the ruling dynasty for generations in several of them, but the one key event in those timelines was that Stuart Power died early in the Badderdays."

"_There's more to all this, isn't there?"_ Jillian asked.

"Yeah," Elias held up the disk for Jillian to see over the vid. "The information I just told you about is the tip of the iceberg. From the Intel I dug up and what we found on the searches, put it all together and it points to it being Custer who accessed the actual dates of June 14th, 2132, and December 25th, 2147. He's the one who researched the adjacent timelines and figured out which one to jump us to. But this is the part you won't believe - he sent back a time beam that caused Stuart Power's death during our experiments to move an item one day in the year 2217. At the same time, he uploaded a program that would seek out two different moments and mimic a Brophy Theorem and toss us into a sciting panic trying to fix it and not look for how it happened because we'd assume that it was a Brophy." He took a deep breath after that long, run-on sentence. "But here's our big problem. He erased his search so there's no direct evidence linking any of this to him, but he didn't erase the information in the computer buffer. I've got a copy of it, but it's not exactly as complete as we'd need. Basically, it's a big pile of sciting odd coincidences, some guesswork and no hard proof."

"Well, there's some evidence," Delphi added.

"_Circumstantial,"_ Jillian reminded them.

Elias shrugged. "Strong circumstantial, but that's it. And look, all we have is supposition. We've got no _physical_ evidence. Yet. We'll have to worry about him after we save history from the Council."

"_Wait,"_ Jillian raised a finger as she thought through the information. _"This was done during our experiments? Does the buffer show that we also ran a top-secret experiment at the same time and didn't use the Cyclotron? I don't think any of us have written up a report about it because we got caught up in this clusterdreck. Custer might not realize that we were able to send a beam back without the Cyclotron being the power behind it during our secondary experiment."_

Elias shook his head. "Nothing in the buffer about it. So we don't know if Custer knows that our little experiment happened or may have been a success."

"_That may be our one wild card,"_ Jillian suggested. _"Wait, does anyone other than the three of us know we ran that experiment?"_

Elias shrugged. "Not as far as I can tell."

With a conspiratorial smile, Delphi said, "Good. We should be able to use that. Jillian, you and I are under orders to get the new temporal coordinates to send Chase to as quickly as we can and report to the Administration building _tomorrow_."

"_Tomorrow? There's no way we can find a suitable place in that amount of time. It'd take -"_

"Just pick a place," Elias suggested. "Any place. It won't matter. Just tell the Council something."

Delphi took a deep breath. "I think we should give our suspicions about Custer to the higher-ups at the same time."

"Why?" Elias asked quickly.

"Think tactically. Tracking down someone even thought to have altered the timeline? That'll distract the Council long enough for us to carry out your plan B, and Jillian," she turned back to the monitor, "whatever Elias' rather intriguing idea is for Plan B is and it doesn't look like he's telling, you and I can't be anywhere around when he pulls it off because he's right. It's illegal if we get caught. And I think all three of us want to be above suspicion when it takes effect so no one looks at us as being the ones who did it. Us doing our jobs at our desks is the perfect cover. Besides-"

"_Wait a minute,"_ Jillian argued. _"We think we may have found a conspirator trying to destroy the world, we have to wait on nailing him and you mean we have to miss being in on one of Elias' shenanigans?" _

"Only if you want to keep your jobs if it backfires," Elias suggested.

Jillian grumbled._ "But your stunts are so much fun to watch."_


	10. Chapter 10

**Sunday**

**July 7th, 2148**

**Resistance Hospital**

"Intel's looking better than we thought," Scout announced as they regrouped at the jumpship. "We may not be needed for a while yet. Everyone's taking advantage of the weather to cover their tracks while they move to new camps or settle in at bases. Rain's filling up water sources too."

Tank handed Jon a reader with new information. "The biomechs are staying clear of the storm path. One report states that the clickers aren't able to communicate or move easily in the storms. That's allowing more people to move to safer places faster."

"Alternating temperatures as well," Jon added. "They can't operate too well in it. All this bad weather is causing other difficulties with the terrain. They just want us on stand-by, so that might mean we've got a few days off if they don't need us. How's the jumpship holding up?"

Matt patted the hull. "She's doing fine. Scout's ordered restock from the quartermaster so we'll back up to full strength after that. Also, Jennifer and I had improved the insulation on the ship late last year before... well, before. These storms have been a great test run for it."

"So the ship handles better than she did in such storms, you just don't like flying through them," Jon concluded.

"Yep. I'll be in trouble when Jennifer gets to take a good luck at the jumpship and see all the repairs we've had to do, so I'm not adding a single dent to it now that we've got her back."

"Dents?" Scout smiled and shook his head. "Hawk, I'd hate to be in your shoes when she sees that dent in the underhull you haven't repaired yet."

"I thought you repaired that," Tank interrupted quickly.

"Not yet. And that wasn't my fault. That was a cannon shot from that attack we made on the biomech repair facility. It didn't breach containment, and it didn't jar the plating loose. And just to make sure she's got other things on her mind than inspecting the jumpship any time soon, I think it's a good idea if Jon tells her that she's going to meet the guy who created Mentor," Matt suggested.

"Was that an accomplishment?" Stuart asked.

"She and Mentor talk a lot," Tank explained. "And even if he doesn't admit it, I think Jennifer's his favorite human."

"But Mentor's just a computer interface," Stuart protested.

"Oh, no," Scout disagreed. "Mentor is much more than that. He's been the sixth member of our team for years. He's a great sounding board."

Matt put his hand on Jon's shoulder. "Go. Tell our girl we're back. We'll follow you in a few minutes."

Jon gave him a smile and walked quickly toward the hospital.

Matt glanced over at Stuart. "I think it's a good idea to give them a few minutes alone."

**~0~0~0~0~**

Evening had quickly given way to nighttime. As they walked toward the hospital area, Stuart looked up at the sky and didn't see a single star. Even the moon was hiding behind the polluted clouds. "Matt, how long has it been like this?"

Matt looked up. "Years. There's an entire generation that has no idea what a night sky is supposed to look like."

Stuart looked at his friend and raised an eyebrow.

"Jennifer had never seen a star outside of pictures. Dread kept a lot of truth from the Youth."

Stuart and Matt lagged behind as Tank and Scout hurried through the corridor and disappeared through a set of double doors. Stuart was amused at the sudden change in Jon's demeanor when Matt suggested that Jon go first and tell Jennifer about Stuart and that she was about to be introduced to Mentor's originator. His eyes lit up and the dark, worried behavior suddenly went away. Stuart wouldn't call it 'giddy,' but it could definitely be dropped into the 'happy' category.

"I can't wait to hear this long story about them," Stuart joked. "He has obvious feelings for her. What's she like?"

Matt slowed down. "Smart, inquisitive, wants to know everything Dread kept from her. She's selfless and brave. She's not like anyone I've ever met before. All those years I was in the military, all those people I met over the years, and this young lady is the one who made me see the world for what it was and what it needed to be. We saw her struggle just to understand something as simple as humor, and she did until she understood it. She showed us everything Dread destroyed in a very personal way."

Matt paused, and then said, "No, I have met one other person who's selfless and brave and has an idealism that won't quit. Maybe that's why Jennifer and Jon are perfect for each other. They're a lot alike. Oh, and one other thing - you're probably going to witness a scientific brainstorming session. Jennifer's been looking over data about the weather and the tachyons and everything going on. Scout's been collecting more data. They'll start comparing notes and supposing answers. Sometimes, all you can do is sit back and hang on while they do the talking."

"A brainstorming session?" Stuart asked.

Matt laughed. "Trust me. It's something you have to experience."

They kept walking until they reached the hospital room. Matt walked in, and Stuart heard a happy, "Hiya, kiddo. How ya feeling?" With a great deal of curiosity, he followed his friend inside.

The young lady lying in the bed looked like she'd gone a few rounds with biomechs and had come out the victor. What intrigued him was the expression on Jon's face as he looked at her and held her hand, speaking to her in a low voice. That long story Matt promised to tell him later about those two should be interesting.

"Jennifer, this is my father, Stuart Power," Jon nodded his head toward Stuart. "Dad, this is Jennifer Chase."

Matt nudged Stuart further into the room, and then Stuart approached the bed with his hand outstretched. He was surprised at the strength in Jennifer's hand when she took his. She was recovering from her ordeal rather well.

"You look just like Mentor," she said in astonishment. "Only you're shorter than I thought you'd be."

Stuart chuckled. "I've been hearing that a lot lately."

"But you don't sound like him," she added. "Your voice isn't quite as calm as his."

Stuart had to smile. "Calm? Ah, yes. You're right. The computer interface program I used had a calmer intonation when speaking. I never could quite get a full range of emotions programmed in." They were all so used to Mentor to speak to that having him there talking to them must be like a novelty. "So I understand you and I are fellow time travelers."

"So I've just been told," she said with a smile. "You jumped from 2132 to 2148?"

Stuart nodded. "Apparently. It must seem as strange to me as moving from December of one year to July of the next does to you. I find I'm still at a loss of words for everything that has happened. Yet, here we are and I have no other logical explanation at this moment to explain it."

Stuart released her hand and then sat down next to the bed. He felt completely out of sorts and out of place. What did he say to people who had fought and survived Lyman's warped view of the world when he'd been out of the loop for years? Maybe Jennifer felt the same way?

"It all sounds like it came out of a storybook," Jennifer agreed. She was studying him intently. Stuart suddenly felt like he was under a looking glass. "Your voice really is different from Mentor's."

"It is?" Strange... but he had patterned Mentor after him.

"She's the only one who can tell the difference," Scout explained as he sat down in a chair next to her. "How are you feeling?"

"Everything hurts, but I'll live. Did you find out anything new?"

"You have no idea," Scout became suddenly serious. "Did you know that Hawk and Stuart used to argue over who could make the best s'mores?"

Hawk chortled. "My way was right."

"No, it wasn't," Stuart argued while trying to suppress a smile. "You always burned the marshmallows."

"_Toasted _the marshmallows," Hawk pointed out. "Not burned."

"Matt, they caught fire because you held them too close to the flames," Stuart reminded him.

Stuart saw Jennifer glance over at Jon and both tried not to laugh. Then the rest of the team suppressed smiles. Stuart realized this was something that they did that was familiar to them - they made a little joke. Perhaps to lessen the tension before dealing with a serious matter?

Then the mood changed subtly and suddenly. Stuart recognized it. Jokes were being put aside.

As Scout pulled a reader out of his pocket, Tank said, "Scout got a lot more information at Los Alamos. He's been looking at it the entire way back trying to make sense of some of it."

"I looked over some of the files you left me," she told him. "It's all strange."

"It's absolutely like nothing recorded in the database. I've been checking historical and scientific archives all day. We're in totally new territory," Scout told her. "Everything I got at Los Alamos is checking out the way we talked about. A series of storms grew in strength for a week, raining for an hour then stopping for an hour, then the storms united and the tachyon particles were there, now the storms have split up again, it's raining for an hour, stopping for an hour, and get this - they're decreasing in strength. If it continues to track like this -"

"The storms will be over in just three more days," Jennifer finished for him.

Jon joined in the conversation. "The weather has driven the biomechs back temporarily and refugees are able to move to some of the safer areas. Water cisterns are filling up due to the rains. Lakes are filling up again. Ponds, streams, even the rivers are running. The administrator told me that whatever's causing this isn't just affecting the weather. It's affecting the geology and the ecology of the area the storms cover. Mudslides are one problem. Washed out areas are another. Underground water sources are moving more quickly and burrowing out sinkholes that are collapsing. Then there's all the damage the high winds and tornadoes have caused."

Tank pulled Scout's reader toward him slightly so he could see the screen better. "But how can storms be stable like that and not move?"

Scout shook his head and shrugged. "No idea, big guy. Maybe it's because it's not a natural storm?"

Stuart felt like the fifth wheel in the conversation. Watching them, he guessed that this group knew how to talk to each other, each giving their own opinion and when. They worked together well. That was a benefit for a team. He could only sit there, but something about an unnatural storm started him thinking. "Maybe because it's _not_?" he suggested.

Five people looked at him.

"What are you thinking, Stuart?" Matt asked him.

"I'm thinking Einstein."

Matt crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. "E=MC2 Einstein?"

"Same one," Stuart agreed. "If you consider the theory that the closer you get to the speed of light, the more time _appears_ to slow down -"

"Perception is relative," Jon interrupted.

Stuart smiled and nodded. That was a scientific process he had taught Jon years ago when he was a boy. Sometimes, what you see isn't exactly what it is. "Exactly. For instance, light bends as it passes by an astronomical body that exerts a gravitational force on it. We're not seeing light from a star coming to us in a straight line even though we perceive light to always travel in a straight line."

Scout nodded his head. "You're thinking we're looking at these storms in a straightforward way and that might not be right."

"It's a possibility," Stuart explained. "To us, storms are random, natural events. These are a series of storms we perceive raging on a schedule, but what if these storms are not _just_ the result of time travel - if, indeed, we were moved through time?"

"Time travel needs water?" Scout joked.

"Not quite," Stuart surmised. "I haven't had a chance to look over the data, but perhaps we should assume that it takes a great deal of power to move someone through time. Did that energy come from one source or was it generated from multiple sources? Is it used in other ways during the process? Could storms be the result of using so much energy? Could it be -"

"Do you think the storms could be a type of power source?" Tank suggested.

Stuart shrugged. "I don't know. I don't have enough data. I do know that storms occurring on a set schedule is not natural. Then again, moving through time isn't natural either. I think we could presumably link the two events in some way for the sake of speculation."

Scout began researching the data on his reader. "Energy, power... these were electrical storms in places. Wind, thunder, lightning... we need to make some kind of sense out of this."

Jennifer placed the reader in her lap. "There were tachyons in the main storm, none in the others... so let's assume that whatever energy that was used to move us through time peaked during that storm. What kind of energy could we be talking about?"

"It'd have to be stable," Jon suggested. "Nothing that could be interrupted or you could have been lost while you were being moved through time. So maybe a direct power source? A generator? Geothermals?"

Scout shook his head. "I don't know, Captain. With these storms involved - wait, storms. What if electromagnetic induction was involved?"

Matt stood straight. "What's that exactly?"

"Turning kinetic energy, the energy of motion, into electricity," Scout answered. "In this case, the electricity, the end results, could be lightning; lightning could be used as power... something else is moving and making the lightning?"

Scout grew silent as he did some more research. Stuart noticed that Jennifer was also typing into the reader but Jon was holding the reader still for her. She was moving slowly, hinting that she was growing tired.

Jennifer tried to sit up slightly to get a better view of the reader. "Maybe it's not just a single power source that moves something through time," she muttered. "I discovered that the molecules in the storm moved in the same direction. I was thinking that maybe we could relate the movement of tachyons to a magnet. The molecules move in the same direction. Assuming that tachyons are moving in _that_ same direction, it gives us a path to follow. What if one end of the power source, wherever and whenever the place was that moved us, had a positive charge and the other end, basically July 4th, 2148, had a negative charge?"

Scout started typing in his reader. He saw exactly where Jennifer was going with the theory. "Following the path. Gotcha. What's the rule of thumb? Lightning going from the ground to the sky is negatively charged; lighting going from the sky to the ground is positively charged? And tachyons are excited subatomic particles! Faster-than-light subatomic particles! We can only track a tachyon's path by looking at what's missing the way Dillard did... excited particles could increase the vibration of molecules, theoretically, that could be harnessed as kinetic energy to create electricity."

"Electricity which shows up in the form of lightning in a storm," Jennifer added.

Scout stood up, both he and Jennifer had smiles on their faces. "Lightning storms can put electricity in the atmosphere. If the tachyons need an electrical ... uh... current ... to travel through, it might need a lot of electricity in the air. It might have to build up over time."

"Get strong enough to support the amount of tachyons necessary? Maybe?" Jennifer suggested.

Stuart was beginning to like these young scientific minds more and more. Theorizing random ideas, trying to pose various scenarios to little information and scattered data were all well-grounded scientific exercises to bring up new questions and possibly toss out bad ideas. "An alternating power supply rather than a direct power supply," he suggested.

"Alternating current would be stable," Jon added into the conversation. "But building it up to support a massive amount of subatomic particles -"

"The tempo," Jennifer suddenly said.

"Tempo?" Scout asked.

"I compared the path the tachyons took to a magnet, but the storms have a precise tempo to them. Sort of like a schedule or a heartbeat or a pulse. I even thought about a metronome but dismissed the idea." Her voice trailed off and Stuart could easily see that she was processing information faster than he was.

Scout sat back down and leaned his elbows on his knees. "Come on, Jennifer. Let's play a game of 'what if.' You've got something in mind. What is it?"

"What if the storms are an unexpected result of time travel?" She thought for a moment. "What if _we_ were trying to move something through time? We find a moment in time we want to change and then send some kind of beam or energy pulse or whatever to that particular moment. We do nothing else other than send that beam to that point. As the beam moves through time, somehow, there is a weather disturbance at the destination. Maybe storms occurring on an hourly schedule only happened with this one. Maybe another experiment would have storms happening every twelve hours instead. It could be connected to the geology and ecology of the area."

"Part of the natural processes of some kind of time travel method?" Scout questioned.

Jennifer shrugged. "Why not? We're just speculating anyway. Let's assume that storms are part of the end process but they're necessary for any of it to work. Or maybe when enough electricity is in the atmosphere, the beam can actually connect with the point in time it's heading for. The tachyons travel along the electrical current -"

"Moving the molecules out of their way just like in Dillard's experiments," Scout said out loud. "The molecules reform as rain maybe? Sometimes?"

"Why not?"

"But there's some big flaws in that theory," Jennifer said in the middle of a yawn. "It wasn't storming when I blew up the base."

Stuart said, "Or at Volcania when I was there."

"Those weren't destinations," Jon theorized. "You were removed from those points and sent to 2148. That was the destination; this was where the storms were."

"And that's where the tachyons traveled to," Scout added.

"This goes way beyond basic science," Matt muttered. "Never my strong suit. Are you getting any of this, Stuart?"

Stuart nodded, sort of. "This is all new science to me too, Matt. I have no idea. We're just theorizing, but it does match with some of the facts."

Scout blew out a tired breath. "As theories go, it doesn't stink. It could hold water, figuratively speaking, but we really have no idea what we're talking about."

Matt stretched. Stuart could hear his joints popping. It was another reminder that his friend had gotten older and he hadn't. "And we don't know why it happened," Matt tossed into the mix.

"Or when or how or who," Jon added. "Or what else they have in mind."

Matt, the practical member of the group, asked, "So if we were to track a storm that comes and goes on a particular schedule, at some point, there'd be a united storm with tachyons streaming through it. Then the schedule starts up again with storms coming and going. We could find someone being moved through time if they show up in the middle of the storm."

"But only if they're being moved to your time and not from it," Jon muttered.

"We weren't in the middle," Jennifer said in the middle of a yawn. "I was at one end, Stuart at the other. How does that fit into the discussion?"

"Maybe it doesn't," Tank suggested. "Maybe it was just a coincidence?"

Stuart listened as the conversation wound down. He honestly didn't know why this conversation had taken place, but then it dawned on him. They weren't just interested in the fact 'something' had happened, they weren't just interested in how it happened. They were convincing themselves that it _had_ happened. They needed to make what happened scientifically real for them. They had to make it tangible. There was a scientific explanation of some sort out there. Even with the two time travelers there in front of them, they were having a hard time believing that they wouldn't wake up the next morning and find it had all been a dream.

Speaking of that - "Gentlemen, I don't know about you, but that young lady is calling it a night." Stuart pointed out the fact that Jennifer was sound asleep.

"We will too," Matt agreed. "Stuart, you and I can bunk in the jumpship. I can catch you up on a few things. Guys?"

Scout shut off his reader and tucked it back in its pouch on his belt. "Tank and I will take watch tonight."

"Watch?" Stuart asked them.

Matt leaned over and said in a low voice, "We don't want a lot of people rushing in here to see Jennifer. Some rumors say she was captured by Dread and we rescued her but she did destroy Blastarr. That has made her a lot of fans lately. So it might be a good idea if we all take turns on watch."

Scout and Tank walked out of the hospital room, Matt and Stuart following. Stuart turned at the last moment and saw Jon sit back in the chair beside the bed and start to study the information on the reader.

"He'll stay on watch in here," Matt whispered. "He needs to be here. If she wakes up, they have a lot to talk about, and we don't need to be in earshot. Come on. I've got a couple of long stories to tell you."


	11. Chapter 11

**Sunday**

**March 24th, 2357**

**Temporal Administrative Council**

Delphi Aderholdt was a scientist, not a politician. The idea that their research was being used for an 'easy' political solution to a dire situation sickened her. All the reports she, Elias and Jillian had been able to generate, all the data they had collected, all the ideas they'd been bouncing off each other for hours had not given them a Plan B to offer the Council. All they had was a Plan B for Pitcairn to initiate, whatever it was, and more than likely, it was one the Council would frown on. Good thing the Council didn't know about it.

And, scite it all, she'd left her coffee cup on the table in the lobby of the Council Chambers. She really needed a caffeine fix at the moment.

Appearing before the Council never intimidated her. Pencil-pushing politicians who used others to do their dirty work instead of getting their fingerprints all over it - no, that wasn't a good thing to be thinking. The Council was a powerful group, and she had to be respectful no matter what else was happening or what thoughts were going through her head. Jillian Barrett sat beside her, her demeanor calm as if she we were waiting for a transport to travel cross-country.

How in the world could Jillian be so calm? Delphi felt jittery. She was jerking her leg up and down in response to her internal agitation. Maybe she could sneak out to the lobby and get her coffee?

"Stop that," Jillian whispered as she pointed to Delphi's leg. "I'll get you a triple-caff coffee after we get out of here. Just take a deep breath so we can get through this."

Administrator Collier banged the gavel on the desk and called the group to order. "Doctor Aderholdt, Doctor Barrett, thank you for coming here to brief us on such short notice. Let's skip the niceties and get right to the heart of the matter. Do we have the exact temporal coordinates of Corporal Chase?" Collier asked Aderholdt and Barrett.

Delphi sighed. "A resistance base with a hospital in Montana. We have some conflicting information because the hospital records didn't record exactly where she was, but we're fairly certain she was there on July 8th, 2148."

"Fairly certain?"

"Time doesn't sit still for scans," Delphi tried to joke.

"Ma'am," Barrett began to object.

"I am not happy about this decision myself," Collier explained. "Do we have the coordinates to send Corporal Chase to?"

Jillian and Delphi looked at each other. Elias had said to pick a place, any place to tell the Council. They found a few feasible locations and chose the first one that showed up on their monitors. "Yes, ma'am," Jillian answered. "We checked the historical records, economical reports, ecological and geographical surveys available to us. We have several viable locations according to the reports. The most logical and merciful choice is a small town in the middle of England in the year 2208, sixty years after her reappearance."

"Why send her to another country only sixty years later?" Collier asked, her tone perplexed. "Is that far enough into the future?"

Jillian cleared her throat. "That area was undergoing some geological, oceanographical, and atmospheric changes during that time. It created a situation in both the water and the air that made getting to or from England, Scotland and Wales almost impossible for several years. Even communications were down until 2221. The population was re-establishing itself in that area but was living a fairly primitive life while rebuilding their technologies. That gives Corporal Chase a chance to re-establish herself in a new life in a country and a time where her fields of expertise will prove to be a valuable commodity."

"What effect will she have on the timeline? If she marries, produces an offspring -"

"Nothing major," Jillian answered quickly. "At least, according to our research, she goes there and lives out her life there in some general obscurity. There, she would establish herself as something of an engineer, having some professional success and earning a comfortable living. There's not much yet that we can deduce about her personal life if moved to that time. All we can say at this moment is that there's nothing that registers on the timelines as being anything out of the ordinary."

"What of the Power Team during that time?"

Delphi looked at another printout. "Those that are alive will have retired from public life. Finding them is difficult for anyone, even those in the government. Even when communications are re-established between England and the rest of the world, the question may be moot." Did she have to go into detail? Being vague worked better, right?

The rest of the Council muttered among themselves, then Collier asked, "Do you foresee any problems this time, Doctors?"

Jillian sighed. It was time to divert the Council's attention. "If we can perform this correction in secret, then no faux Brophy Theorems will get proven this time," she said.

That got the Council's attention.

"What do you mean by that, Doctor?" Collier asked.

Jillian and Delphi looked at each other nervously and then Delphi handed the Council the information they had on William Custer.

"There are indications that the splittering of the rescue wave fractal sent back to obtain and move Stuart Power in 2132 was produced by an engineer named William Custer at the Cyclotron labs. We have no absolute proof -"

Collier held up her hand to silence the scientists. She looked through the file, page after page, sentence after sentence... "Regardless of this information which we will investigate ourselves, we still have a problem in 2148 that must be resolved. Doctor?"

Jillian continued. "Due to our inexperience and the temporal instability created by the original time wave that splittered into two fractals, we agree that we won't be able to send a person back in time to July 8th, 2148. We can, however, send a hologram back as per the Council's suggestion."

"Won't that alert Custer at the Cyclotron Laboratories?" Collier asked.

Delphi shook her head. "No ma'am. For this assignment, we won't have to fire up the Cyclotron at all. The Cyclotron has been used as a power source for the temporal beams, not only for us to establish a beam but also when we move mass from our point in time to another point in time."

Councilor Reutiman leaned forward. "Excuse me, if you need the Cyclotron to move mass from one point to another, then won't you need to fire it up to move Jennifer Chase to 2208?"

Jillian leaned forward, placed her elbows on the table and wove her fingers together. "No, sir. The mechanics of the operation have changed. Before, we needed the Cyclotron for a constant power source to fuel the time wave, to give it substance. Moving an object from our time to the past required a tangible beam. That's not necessarily the case now." She glanced at Delphi who nodded at her. "We haven't had time to write up a report on this yet. The experiment we were working on when all this happened was trying to send a time beam back to a specified temporal coordinate and move an object from one day to another without the Cyclotron by harnessing the resulting energy created by the time wave through electromagnetic induction. Basically, the beam fuels itself. We chose the year 2217. We needed to take readings from simultaneous experiments - one using the Cyclotron and the same experiment independent of it and using electromagnetic induction. It was during that experiment that a third beam was sent back to kill Stuart Power."

Every member of the Council sat there in utter shock, not moving, mouths agape in surprise.

"Ex... excuse me," Administrator Collier cleared her throat. "Are you telling this Council that you performed an unsanctioned and unapproved experiment and was able to send a time wave back in time successfully, move an object one day into the future - _without the Cyclotron_?"

Delphi nodded. "Yes, ma'am, we think we did."

"You think? Did you or did you not move an object in time?"

Both scientists shrugged. "We don't know yet, ma'am," Jillian explained. "We haven't had a chance to find out the results for that experiment. We do know that the beam hit the target of 2217, but that's all. However, given that we had no negative results come back on the monitors, we're speculating that the experiment worked. And there's no record of it, so it's quite likely Custer doesn't know about it."

"What about moving Chase?" Reutiman asked.

Jillian answered quickly. "It can be done under the sensors using electromagnetic induction and not the Cyclotron."

Again, the Council spoke amongst itself. Collier asked, "When can you begin this experiment?"

Delphi glanced over at Jillian. Both already knew the answer. "As soon as we can coordinate the temporal shifts at our respective labs, pinpoint the exact moment to take her, preprogram a timewave to move her... maybe by tomorrow morning at the earliest."

Collier steepled her fingers together and stared down at the two scientists. "See to it. And Doctors, please, no more unsanctioned experiments without our knowledge."

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Monday**

**July 8th, 2148**

**Resistance Base Hospital**

**5:00 a.m.**

Jon dozed off sometime around midnight. All the excitement and concern of the last few days finally caught up with him.

Jennifer woke up around midnight; the low hum of the regenerator kept disturbing her sleep. She watched silently as Jon lost the fight with his eyelids. In the dim light, he looked tired, older. There were worry lines around his eyes even in sleep. The touch of gray at his temples caught the light. What kind of stress had he been under? She wondered what she had missed out on all those months. What had the boys been through? What had happened? And Stuart Power was back. That was going to change everything.

She let her thoughts meander around until she fell asleep again. She couldn't fall into a deep sleep; she kept waking up every half hour or so. If she moved a certain way, she pulled sore muscles that woke her up. Then the regenerator's hum kept her from falling completely asleep.

At 5:00, she woke up again and saw Jon sitting there beside the bed watching her. He didn't look as tired after the short catnap. In fact, he was almost grinning.

"Sleep well?" she asked.

He nodded. "Maybe for the first time in a long time," he told her, his eyes not leaving hers. "How about you? How are you feeling?"

She moved slightly. "Not as sore as I was, and I was able to get a little sleep. I wish I was back in my own bunk though." She paused for a moment before remembering, "Well, if I had a bunk."

Jon smiled. "You've got something better than that. Our new base is a lot more comfortable than the old one, and the quarters have actual beds in them, not just bunks in cubby holes."

Real beds? "Those wouldn't have been easy to get. How did you establish a new base so quickly?" she wanted to know.

"We didn't. Dad had it built years ago at the same time he built the original base," he explained, his voice sounding a little happier. "Its existence and location were in a coded file in Mentor's databanks, and it couldn't be accessed until something happened to the Colorado base. You won't believe what we found there."

Jennifer waited for him to explain, but he didn't say anything else. He just had a knowing smile on his face. "What'd you find?"

Jon's smile became a very big grin. "That's a surprise for you. I think you'll like it."

"I wouldn't mind having a surprise I'll like," she mused. She noticed that he was gazing at her with a strange look in his eyes. "What is it?"

"It just doesn't seem real," he told her.

"Your dad?" she said as she sat up slightly, trying to ignore the muscle aches.

"Dad. And you. It's like we woke up one morning and someone gave us this huge gift."

_And you._ Right. She'd been gone months. She needed to remember that. Sometimes, it was just hard to view that in any logical way. "Did you get a chance to talk to him?"

Jon sat forward and propped his elbows on the mattress. "Little bit on the way back here from Los Alamos. We talked about the team mostly. Who was who and who did what. I honestly didn't know what to say to him. He was dead to us for sixteen years. What do you say to someone in a situation like that?"

Jennifer would have shrugged if it wouldn't have hurt. "He must want to know what the world's like now, what Dread's doing, all about you, everything."

"Hawk's telling him," Jon explained. "They went back to the jumpship last night to talk. I guess it's easier to talk about some classified things when the only person that can hear you is a portable version of Mentor in the computer."

That got Jennifer's attention. "You've modified the computers to hold Mentor's personality matrix?"

That made Jon smile. "Sort of. It was your idea, your design for a link to the main database. We were able to get the personality pattern on the jumpship. Scout worked out the rest of it some months ago. All we had to do was load the primary program and then add in a portable power unit to patch into the system to handle the power draws between the onboard systems and the main matrix. It acts more like a small version of the program and not the actual personality matrix itself."

They had put Mentor on the jumpship? That was a project she had considered for a while but couldn't get the power distribution balanced well enough. She had started to work on a redesign on the computer configuration and the power cells to handle the load and the overflow, but she hadn't had a chance to work on implementing it before Christmas. "How did he do it?"

"Uh," Jon seemed to get flustered over the words, "something about adding additional power cables, redirecting the flow of the portable power cell's energy to the on-board matrix specifically, and then having any power overflow go to the emergency booster cells for the shields. I think. I didn't quite follow the finer details on the plan. I can just tell you your idea worked great."

Her idea. Jennifer considered the fact that another 'something major' had changed in just the few months she had been gone. She had a sudden revelation. Although some major things had changed for her, the world had changed for Stuart Power. If she felt out of sorts, he must feel completely out of place. What were their places in the world they had woken up in?

Jon took her hand. "Hey, what's wrong?"

"What?"

"That look in your eyes. What's wrong?"

What was wrong, well, maybe it was time to talk about several things that were wrong.

"Your father must feel completely out of the loop."

Jon sighed. "He does. I don't know what to say or how to say it. When we landed at Los Alamos, Hawk met him first to make sure it was him. It's like he said, he's known him longer and he knows him better. I think Hawk will be the best one to help get him up to speed."

Jennifer chose her next words carefully. "He seems... not as uncomfortable as I'd imagine him to be."

Jon chuckled. "He's got a scientific mystery to work on. As long as he keeps his mind busy, he's usually fine."

Jennifer noticed something in his voice. It wasn't really the sound of someone trying to convince themselves of something. It was more like a hopeful statement. That meant it was a good time to change the subject. "You said you hadn't found a new pilot."

"Not quite. I said we didn't want a new pilot," he smiled. "Slight difference."

"But you thought I was dead. You would have needed another pilot. Hawk would have been pulling double duty otherwise."

Jon moved so he was sitting on the edge of the mattress. "It wouldn't have been right. The jumpship's yours. No one else could sit in that seat and have the ship do all those maneuvers the way she does them for you."

That brought a genuine smile to her face. "So I guess I still have a job?"

"Absolutely. No question about that."

Seven months, she still had a job, but what about Stuart after sixteen years? "It doesn't feel like seven months to me, but all of you have gone on fighting the war. If I feel this out of sorts, your father must feel even worse. I've got something to do, I know everybody, but he may not know what he's supposed to do now or how he fits in. He may not know how he's supposed to act around you."

**~0~0~0~0~**

Jon suddenly realized his mistake. Time had not passed for Jennifer or his dad. He knew that fact, but now he _realized_ the fact. They hadn't been there, and the world had changed. Jon could kick himself.

Even he hadn't taken into account that _he _was different from the man both Jennifer and Stuart remembered. He was a teenager the last time he spoke to his dad, and that was sixteen years earlier. They used to talk all the time, and now, Stuart must have expected Jon to behave the same way, and he hadn't. In fact, he wasn't 'talking' to Stuart at all. He had grown accustomed to his father not being in his life, and all that had changed. Stuart might like to see some affirmation of the fact that his son was glad he was back, right?

Then there was Jennifer. He had always kept himself bottled up and stand-offish toward her for a long time even when his feelings had begun to grow stronger. She might have expected him to continue behaving like that, not sitting with her in her hospital room all hours of the day and night.

_There are times when a good kick in the rear was warranted_, Jon thought to himself.

"I guess I need to talk to my dad," he said. "Really talk to him."

"It might be a good idea," she agreed.

"I'll do that later. Right now, I would like to talk to you though," he said with a smile. "We never got to finish that last conversation Blastarr interrupted."

He saw her mouth gently lift into an almost-smile. "You said we'd both get to say the same things."

"Yeah, I did." He didn't really know what to say next. He could say 'I love you' just as she had, but he wanted to say it in a more unique way. He leaned over and gave her a soft kiss. He leaned back slightly so he could see her, see the smile reach her eyes. "Would that be a good starting point for that conversation?"

**~0~0~0~0~**

**Monday**

**July 8th, 2148**

**Resistance Base Landing Pad**

**Before Dawn**

Stuart and Matt talked for hours in the privacy of the jumpship. Stuart had listened to his friend tell the story of Jon, the team, how Lyman became Dread, what Dread had done, the systematic destruction of civilization, that fateful day at the Colorado base, all of it. He watched the recording of the last conversation between Jon and Jennifer, saw how losing her ripped his son's heart out. Then the story of how Jon had changed after losing Jennifer, how he became almost brutal in his tactics was unexpected. The fact that kind of unrestrained anger existed in his son surprised him.

"I didn't recognize him, Stuart," Matt explained from the co-pilot's seat. "I did everything I could to help him get through losing her, but he was so angry all the time. He took it out on Dread. He was relentless, but it's changed how this war's going. We're finally starting to win, but I've been afraid that we were going to lose Jon along the way. I'm hoping we'll see the old Jonathan Power now that we've got Jennifer back. To be honest, having you back should help too, but he'd dealt with your death."

From what he'd seen and heard, Stuart knew that Jennifer was the important one for the team to have back. They hadn't dealt with her loss and were still mourning her. She was still very much a part of their lives even though she'd been 'dead' for all those months. He had been 'dead' for sixteen years and was now the fifth wheel, brought back to a strange world he knew little about and where he didn't feel like he belonged.

"Are you all right, Doctor Power?" Mentor asked.

"I'm not sure," Stuart answered. Stuart sat in the pilot's seat, remembering how it was only a few days earlier Matt had been working on this ship, trying to get it in top form while Stuart explained about the newly built jump gates. "Everything's so different. Sixteen years have passed. My son's grown. Civilization has crumbled. The world has become a wasteland with the survivors scavenging for food and necessities. I saw signs of malnutrition and exposure at Los Alamos. Situations ripe for disease and widespread deprivation. It feels like I'm dreaming and woke up in a nightmare."

"If I may," Mentor continued, "although there are vast areas of devastation and destruction, there are what Captain Power calls small pockets of hope and home. People still survive in the wastelands. Many are still fighting."

"We're not finished yet, Stuart," Matt agreed. "Not by a long shot." Then Matt glanced up at Mentor, then back at Stuart. "Ya know, I just don't hear a difference in your voices. You two even look the same except Mentor seems taller."

Stuart laughed. "It seems to me that I only put Mentor online a few days ago. Neither one of us has aged very much, have we?"

"Clean living," Matt suggested humorously. "Can't do anything about your height though."

No matter what else had happened to the world, Matt's sense of humor was still there. There wasn't much to laugh or smile about though, not with the world in the state it was in, yet this team was able to joke and make each other happy. If they were a small island of hope and optimism in a sea of destruction, then, Stuart wondered, how bad would the nightmare have been if the Power Team hadn't existed? How hopeless would the world seem without these five individuals who had kept fighting for humanity?

"You've done some incredible work here," Stuart said. "You fought a war, kept Lyman from destroying everything, and you raised Jon."

Matt shook his head. "No, no, I didn't. He was almost grown -"

"He was fifteen," Stuart reminded. "You did a good job raising him."

Matt shook his head. "I was more like a favorite uncle who helped out a lot. I gave him advice, tried to get him to have some fun and not be so serious all the time, things like that."

"You did more than that," Stuart praised him. "The man he is today is due a great deal to your influence, not mine. I wasn't there for him." Stuart didn't want to think of his long absence at the moment. He wanted to know more about the team. "So how is it Jon is in charge when he's a captain and you're a major?"

Matt had to laugh, but Stuart didn't know what the joke was. "Jon had full access to the base. He's the one who figured out the suits. He had the name. Dread was after him but Jon just kept beating him. Jon could become a focal point for the Resistance that would far outweigh anything I could do. Besides, he needed someone with the same base authorizations to be his second-in-command and run the base. If something were to happen to him, I'm the only other person who knew enough about your work to carry it on. Basically, it made sense for Jon to be in charge of the team and me to be in charge of the base."

"But you're not at the Colorado base anymore."

"No, we've taken a much more frigid post," Matt joked.

"Frigid, right. Northstar," Stuart sighed. "That means it was empty for at least fifteen years?"

Matt nodded. "Yep. We got there and had to chisel some of the equipment out of the ice."

"Did the computers still work?"

"Pretty much," Matt explained. "Had to update some systems to work with the ones we're using now, but that was pretty easy. Changed out some of the hardware because some circuits had busted. We're having a little trouble with the ship. It doesn't like the cold. The lines freeze up and it has trouble staying in the air."

That sounded odd. "But I thought the sprintship was designed for all weather situations."

Matt laughed. "That's what the ZF company said it could do. I don't think there was much truth in that advertising. We're having to retrofit some of the systems to work in that kind of cold. It'll take some more time, but once Jennifer is up and around and can start working on it as well, repairs will go faster. That young lady knows more about ships instinctively than any of us could have ever learned, and she can redesign one to make it do things you never dreamed about. Just wait until you see what she did to this jumpship. And having two working ships with different capabilities is going to be a big ace up our sleeves eventually."

Something in the way Matt said 'two working ships' caught Stuart's attention. "Don't a lot of the Resistance groups have more than one ship?"

Matt frowned slightly, then seemed to remember that Stuart was still in catch-up mode. "Stuart, we're the only Resistance team that has a ship. The UTO has a small fleet of all kinds of ships, but they don't do a lot of fighting. A lot of the groups have ground transports, but we're the only ones who can get airborne."

No ships? Dread controlled the skies? No wonder he had such a big advantage in the wars. Air power _was _power. "I can't believe it," he sighed. "Four days ago, I was at Volcania fighting Lyman. Now... all these changes, everything's different. Jon's grown and is taking the lead against Lyman. Lyman's now Dread. The world as I knew it is gone. I don't know quite how to deal with it all, Matt."

Matt placed a hand on Stuart's shoulder. "One day at a time. I don't know why you're here and not dead. I don't know why someone brought you forward. Maybe there's some ultimate purpose in all this, who knows. But we've got both of you back, and I've got to tell you, that has to be a good thing when fighting Dread. It's got to give us more of an edge."

"I'm just a scientist, Matt."

Matt shook his head. "No. You're more than that. You're Stuart Power. You understand Overmind better than anyone else. You know Lyman Taggart better than anyone else, and even if Jon's convinced that Taggart's completely gone, there might be some small kernel of him buried in that machine somewhere. And when Dread finds out you're alive, he'll focus on you. But that's all small potatoes. No matter how much the Resistance can use your scientific skills or what you know personally, you've got a son in there that needs you."

Jon needed him? He didn't quite believe that. Jon was grown, but Matt knew Jon better than he did. He'd raised him. Stuart knew he could ask Matt anything. Matt, his friend, the person he trusted more than anyone. "Tell me how to talk to Jon. I've only spoken with him on the flight back, and the subjects were pretty general. I just don't know what to say."

Matt shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe you two need to try to be friends first, then a father and son later. I do know that having you back is a good thing for him."

"He's a grown man now. He doesn't need his father," Stuart reasoned.

Matt looked at his chronometer. "He needs you more than you know. He needs your wisdom and your advice. There's still a fifteen year old kid inside him that blames himself for getting caught and being bait in a trap for you."

"It's not Jon's fault what happened that day. That's all on Taggart."

Matt shrugged. "He knows it's not his fault, but that doesn't mean he doesn't feel a little guilty. Look, it's morning and you've got a long time to get to know Jon again. How about we head back in, check on Jennifer and scare up some breakfast?"


	12. Chapter 12

**Monday**

**March 25th, 2357**

**Jet Propulsion Laboratories and Los Alamos Laboratories**

It was showtime.

Elias took position in his office at the JPL. Multiple monitors surrounded him, but only one was focused on a single moment on the timeline.

Delphi sat in her office, her main computer logged in to the same moment on the timeline.

Jillian was hundreds of miles away at Los Alamos, her monitor zeroed in on the timeline as well.

Despite the distance between them, the system network connected them as well as if they'd been in the same room. Not only did each have a monitor targeting the moment Jennifer Chase was at the hospital in Montana, each also had a monitor showing the other two co-workers at their desk. Communication would be very easy.

Three people in three different places, each watching a single moment in the past. There was a certain paradoxical twist to the moment. If they had the time to ponder it, they would have.

Elias considered switching on the recording device that could document everything he was doing for later research and decided against it. For what he had planned, he didn't want anything tracking back to him or Delphi or Jillian. Outsiders might not like or understand what he was about to do. In any case, the computer system would record that they did send a non-Cyclotron powered time wave back to 2148. They just wouldn't get the details. However, just because the actions they were about to take were profound, that didn't mean he wasn't going to make a joke. He spoke into the comm that connected the three offices. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am Elias Pitcairn, temporal adventurer and thrill seeker. Today's objective - move an innocent person through time after she's already been moved through time. It's a tricky proposition, boys and girls, since the temporal disruption hasn't settled down enough to ensure a total success. As you can see, we have - three temporal monitors. Three chairs in front of the three temporal monitors. Three scientists sit in the three chairs in front of the three temporal monitors -"

Delphi cleared her throat. "Want me to elbow you in the ribs? This is not The House That Jack Built."

"And you're stalling," Jillian added.

"Stalling big time," Elias confirmed. "I hate the Council's idea."

Delphi blew out a resigned sigh. "We all do. But we have to do what we have to do. Okay, let's get this started."

All three placed their hands on their computers and began to target a visual representation of the continuum.

Jillian was the first to speak. "Getting confirmation. Temporal and geophysical positioning of target has been attained."

Delphi focused on the temporal signals the rest of the Power Team introduced into the timeline. "We have a small window of time, perhaps four or five minutes, when Corporal Chase is alone. The rest of the team will be elsewhere in the hospital. Just down the corridor if the readings are correct."

Jillian watched the timelines waver on the monitor. "I know we told the Council that time doesn't sit still for scans, but do we know the percentages of accuracy on something like this? We weren't quite on the target with Stuart Power when we were looking for him."

Delphi shrugged and then leaned over to the mic to whisper, "That was because we were being played and interfered with." Since they didn't have to use the Cyclotron that time, this one was all theirs. Percentage of success should be higher.

Jillian agreed. In an answering whisper, she said, "Let's hope so." At least Custer would be in the dark about all of it until they sent in their reports.

Elias targeted the exact location the hologram they were sending back could converge and coalesce without getting anyone's attention. "Think we can hit near 100% on this one? Take a look at these numbers and these waves."

All three scientists looked at the data. "Got the exact location of Chase down to the last millimeter," Jillian announced.

"According to all scans, reports and sensor readings, we've got the exact time she'll be alone. And 7:16 a.m. on July 8th, 2148, is the target moment of removing her," Delphi added.

There as a pause, and both ladies looked at Elias. He shrugged. "We're better than I thought we were. Okay, I can put the hologram in a small supply room down the corridor at exactly 7:11 a.m. on July 8th, 2148. It'll just have to not get anyone's attention for those few minutes. Officially."

The three sat still for a moment, and then each looked at the other.

"Plan B?" Jillian asked.

"Plan B," Elias answered.

Delphi sat back. "Okay, Elias. It's your game now." No one would know what they were doing. Everyone would think they were following the Council's orders.

Once the hologram was in 2148, they only had the one shot. No one other than Delphi and Jillian would hear or see what Elias had planned, but no one would know that they did.

And none of them would tell.

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Monday**

**July 8th, 2148**

**Resistance Hospital**

**7:10 a.m.**

_(T minus 60 seconds)_

Five men stood in the corridor waiting.

Again, waiting.

Only this time, the seconds weren't passing by slowly. They were waiting for Doctor Kirkland to come out of Jennifer's hospital room after examining her.

"She's fine, Captain," Scout said.

Jon had to agree. "She's better. She slept most of the night. She's not in the same kind of pain she was in yesterday. She's..."

"Knowing her, she's acting like it was nothing more than a mission gone bad?" Hawk finished.

"That's all it was for her," Jon explained.

Stuart laughed quietly. "I have to say I understand that feeling."

Jon cleared his voice, "Dad, about that, I'd like to talk to you-"

Doctor Kirkland walked out of the hospital with a smile on her face.

Jon was the first to speak. "How is she?"

"She's going to be fine," Kirkland said, immediately reassuring the team. "She slept off and on most of the night, all of it in a regenerator and her vitals are back up to normal," she yawned. "Sorry. Not much sleep last night. Had some waterlogged patients come in after midnight. Anyway, Jennifer is strong enough to walk a short distance on her own, and she just told me she was hungry."

_(T minus 45 seconds)_

Jon was still worried. "Will you be keeping her here?"

Kirkland shook his head. "Maybe only another day. She's a lot better than yesterday, and the four of you are probably the best medicine for her. I'm going to send her down to X-ray for some scans, make sure her ribs and the damage are healing up as well as I think they are. I need to do that before she eats though."

Hawk slapped his hands together. "So it'd be all right if we get some breakfast for us and her? Have it waiting on her when she gets back?"

_(T minus 30 seconds)_

"I've already got the order in," Kirkland said. "A tech will be bringing the food here in about half an hour. That is if all of you can wait that long. What I'd also like to do is run some medical tests on Doctor Power, if you don't mind."

"Me?" Stuart asked. "I'm fine."

"Sir, I realize you and I have just met, but you're supposed to be dead. But you're also alive which wasn't the case for over fifteen years," Kirkland explained. "Now this team's health is one of my priorities when they're here, so I'd like to see if you and Jennifer have any of the same physical markers. Maybe that information could help all of you figure out what's going on. Then you could tell me."

_(T minus 15 seconds)_

"Come on, Dad," Jon prodded him, "Mom used to say that a medical doctor is your friend."

"That's when she had to convince me to get immunization booster shots when I went overseas. I hate needles," Stuart complained. Then, to Kirkland. "You'd like to do those tests now?"

Kirkland checked her chronometer. "I have the time now."

_(T minus 0 - 7:11 a.m.)_

"Give us just a few moments, Doctor?" Jon asked.

Kirkland glanced at her chronometer again. "Two minutes," she warned as she walked off just a little way to speak to one of her medics.

"Scout, what's the status this morning?"

Scout pulled out his reader and found the latest Intel reports being circulated. "A lot of groups are still relocating, storms are reducing in strength but are still storming on schedule... absolutely nothing requiring our immediate attention - wait - I'm picking up a tachyon reading," Scout muttered.

Stuart took a quick look at the device in Scout's hands. "Tachyons? That might not be good. Where?"

Scout double-checked the coordinates. "Back down the corridor. Only it's getting stronger."

"Which way?" Jon asked.

Scout slapped the side of the device. He pointed his finger down the hallway. "That way."

**~0~0~0~0~**

Without another word, the team walked down the corridor, eyes darting back and forth to find the source of the tachyon signal but they had no idea what they were searching for. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Jon mentally cataloged the people walking by.

Female medic, average height, average weight, red hair, taking an IV out of a supply trolley.

Male medic, tall, blonde, coming out of the supply room.

Female med-tech, tall, dark hair, coming on duty.

Male custodian, balding, older, cleaning the corridor.

Scout stopped at the far end of the corridor and brought out a sensor. "Tachyon reading is heading... that way," he pointed behind them. "Back the way we came."

Back? Jon was thinking one thing - whatever it was in the tachyon stream that brought Jennifer to them might be there to take her back.

Scout followed the indicator and stopped directly outside the supply room. "The tachyon stream originated in here." He opened the door and scanned the area. "It's still there. But there are no storms..."

From the supply room?

Jon remembered. The tall, blonde male came out of the supply room!

He glanced back down the corridor and watched the man walk "through" Jennifer's hospital room doors.

"Jennifer," he ran back down to Jennifer's room, the rest of the team on his heels.

**~0~0~0~0~**

Jon slammed open the hospital doors and saw Jennifer standing shakily on her feet opposite the male medic, now dressed as a Dread Youth overunit. Jon immediately pulled his gun and stood in front of her, holding on to her with his other hand to keep her from falling.

The rest of the team followed. Stuart immediately took the opposite side of Jennifer so Jon could concentrate on the intruder.

"Who are you?" Jon asked, his voice like cold steel.

"You must be Captain Power," the intruder said. "You don't look like your pictures." He looked at each member of the team. "None of you do. Of course, you were older when the pictures were taken."

Tank and Hawk moved behind him, Scout to the side. All weapons were drawn.

"Who are you?" Hawk repeated the questions.

"An interested party?" the intruder tried to smile. Then the overunit began to shimmer, blink, become transparent, and then fold in on himself before restabilizing into a human form.

Scout waved his gun through the 'soldier.' "What the hell?"

The 'soldier' remained where he was but focused on Jon. "Okay, explanation time. Captain Power, My name is Doctor Elias Pitcairn, and I am speaking to you through a hologram sent back in time from the year 2357. I'm sorry; we had to program it to take on the appearance of a Dread Youth. Our bosses' orders."

Jon kept his gun pointed at the hologram, but he did lower it somewhat. "2357?"

"I'm a temporal physicist working out of, well, to you, it'd be a newly constructed Jet Propulsion Laboratories in California. We built the laboratories on the same sites as the old ones that Dread destroyed during the Badderdays."

"Badderdays?" Tank asked.

Elias nodded. "That's what we call the Metal Wars and the Dread Wars."

"Interesting word," Stuart muttered as he put the conversation back on track. "You're a temporal physicist. Can we assume that you're responsible for what's happened to myself and Corporal Chase?"

The hologram almost looked like he was ashamed. "Unintentionally, partly, Doctor Power. I am sorry about that, but something happened. It wasn't our fault. There was another party involved who took matters in his own hands and decided to dreck things up. In the original timeline, you escaped Dread and Volcania before the explosion. You didn't die. You helped lead the Resistance from the Power base. Well, the 'something' happened. The timeline was altered and you were killed in the explosion in 2132. We attempted to repair the temporal problem by removing you from Volcania the moment of the explosion and moving you forward through time by one day in 2132. It didn't quite work out that way."

"You were trying to save Dad's life?" Jon asked.

Pitcairn nodded. "We have evidence that someone sabotaged the experiment, made the machinery do something they weren't authorized to do and then do something we weren't expecting. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out what happened but not how it happened and we weren't looking in the right place. Now we know it was all a deception by someone trying to kill Stuart Power for his own reasons. When we tried to fix the alteration in the timeline, we inadvertently, uh, mistakenly, no, aw, scite it all, everything got drecked up. The time wave splittered into two parts. One found you, the other one took a little side trip to the explosion at the Power Base and brought Corporal Chase forward as well. She was supposed to die in the original timeline just as Stuart Power was supposed to have survived. We think the explosion at the Power Base gave the wave fractals the strength they needed to grab both and send them through the time wave. We don't know why it sat them on July 4th, 2148, or dumped them at our test sites. You know what happened from there."

"Wait, you're trying to re-establish the original timeline?" Hawk argued the point. "Stuart lives and Jennifer dies? And now you're here trying to take Jennifer from us again? You think we're gonna let you?"

Pitcairn glanced over at where Jon stood steadfastly in front of Jennifer, protecting her with his life if necessary. Stuart Power flanked her. No one was taking her, that was certain.

"Never thought I'd get to see the Power Team in this kind of action," Pitcairn muttered more to himself than anyone else. "The Temporal Administrative Council said we have to. Look, you have to understand how this scite-up has people terrified. Captain, we only exist in my time as we do because you lost Jennifer Chase, got angry and then got brutal in your tactics."

"Brutal?" Jennifer asked.

Jon nodded his head, his eyes never leaving the hologram. "What is it you think I did, Pitcairn?"

"You destroyed Dread. You completely wiped out Overmind. You destroyed everything they had. You smashed facilities and bases and wiped biomechs literally out of existence. You didn't let anything remotely Dreadly survive. It was all gone. Through it all, Stuart Power never tried to stop you. He agreed that destroying everything that Dread had was the only way to rebuild."

"He destroyed everything?" Jennifer asked, her voice indicating her confusion.

Jon looked back at Jennifer, her frown an indication that this part of the conversation was a topic they should have discussed earlier in private. He mentally kicked himself. He should have told her yet what he'd done all those months she was gone. "I got angry after what happened and took it out on Dread over the last few months," Jon explained quickly.

"By getting brutal?" she asked.

"And unforgiving and destructive," he finished.

"It's turned the war to our favor," Hawk added.

Jon turned back to Pitcairn. "But even if I did get angry, you're making it sound like I brought down an Armageddon on him." Jon was amazed at the hologram but he didn't let it show on his face. Such technology! And it looked so real! It seemed to take a breath before speaking again.

"You did," Pitcairn explained. "But once Stuart Power was thought killed and the timeline changed and became the timeline you're on now with him here - now - Dread was taken alive, partly at Stuart's insistence. That wasn't how you handled things originally. Overmind hid parts of himself in computers all over the planet and kept himself active. Society didn't really rebuild because we were fighting a perpetual war for decades. In the original timeline, after you lost Corporal Chase, you got vicious. Destroyed all of it. It's because of that fact that humans were able to build new types of computers that whatever was left of Overmind couldn't access. People who still followed Dread had no resources to rebuild their armies. You understand what I'm saying? _You destroyed all of it._ Then, when the time fractal brought Corporal Chase out of the base and she was alive, that changed everything. Our future wouldn't exist because humans didn't have to start over completely. Dread acolytes still existed and, according to the new timeline that was establishing, there have been wars ever since."

Tank stepped slightly to the side to get a better look at the hologram. "You're condemning us for things we haven't done?"

Pitcairn put up his hands in denial and shook his head. "No, I'm not condemning. None of you knows your future exactly, but it'll be your legacy if things aren't changed back to the original timeline where Stuart Power lived but Jennifer Chase didn't. At least, that's what the Council has dictated."

Jon and Stuart took a more protective stance around Jennifer, the team immediately took a more defensive stance around the hologram, but Jennifer stepped out from them and, leaning on Jon as support, approached the hologram. "You walked in the door. No one was in here but me. Why didn't you kill me then if my being alive is so dangerous to your time?"

Pitcairn frowned slightly as he formed his answer. "That was their last resort. No one wanted to kill you. Well, none of_ us_ wanted to kill you. Some of the members of the Council aren't that nice. The Temporal Administrative Council decided they needed to make it look like you were killed by a Dread soldier, which is why this hologram looks like an overunit. Power had to see the hologram seem to kill you. That would make him angry and correct the timeline back to its original parameters. But, believe me, their orders were that you weren't to be killed except as a last option. You were just supposed to be moved forward in time about sixty years. To England. That way, you'd survive but you'd be far enough away from any remaining members of the Power Team, both physically and temporally, to disrupt the now current time line."

"That won't happen," Stuart stated, his voice leaving no room for argument.

"That's why _I'm_ here," Pitcairn explained as the hologram seemed to look at a chronometer. "Look, I've only got a small window of time to explain things and make everything look like it's copasetic. In a nutshell, my co-workers and I didn't agree with the Council. We wanted a happy ending to the story for once. I came up with a plan to warn you through the hologram. The person who orchestrated Stuart Power's death has no way of knowing what we're doing because we're pulling off this stunt under the sensors, and I'm talking to you through the hologram without telling anyone I work for I was going to do it. I didn't want anyone I know to get in trouble. But if you don't win and don't destroy Dread, trouble will be the last of our worries -"

"We will," Scout promised. "Every circuit, every piece of metal, every nut, bolt and washer that he's ever used will go into the scrap heap."

"No," Pitcairn corrected. "You still don't understand. No scrap heaps. Nothing, _absolutely_ nothing can survive. It all has to be destroyed, blasted into bits, melted down, whatever you have to do to make it cease to be what it is or the world as we know it will not exist in my time. The alternate timelines are not good, let me tell you."

"So what's your plan?" Jennifer asked.

Pitcairn glanced around the room. "It's_ our _Plan B. Scite it, how to explain this..." he paused for a moment. "Time, people, events - they're like a row of dominos. Each one falls against the other and they all fall down in a certain pattern. Let just one domino not fall, and everything changes. It's our job to make certain that all the dominos fall correctly. If they don't, we'll know pretty quick."

Stuart made a scientific inquiry. "Whatever happens in our time will be immediately observable and known in your time, right?"

The hologram smiled. "Sometimes! Yes! You get it. There are times when ripples take a little longer for us to know them though."

Hawk took a step forward. "Well, this domino won't fall, and you can't push it over."

The hologram nodded, understanding. "Look, we're being watched, sort of. The Council will want to make sure that we moved Chase. We'll send them a report showing something hit the timeline in about sixty years from where you're standing. I thought if I moved an equivalent mass through the timeline, it would buy us some time, pardon the pun, maybe a week that they don't know she wasn't sent away. But they'll know soon enough that we didn't. They'll know that she was left here and we didn't move her once the changes in the timeline calm down. I'll take responsibility for not letting the Council's plan follow through, but if all of you don't follow through with what you're supposed to do, the future is history and I won't have a job because I'll be in prison for manipulating timelines without authorization. Look, the reason they'll know if you don't succeed is because only the people at JPL and Los Alamos and the Cyclotron Labs will remember the timelines because we exist in a bit of a time bubble that doesn't get affected by temporal changes. That's the only thing that spares us from the Grandfather Paradox."

"The what?" Tank asked.

"Grandfather Paradox," Pitcairn answered quickly. "Basically, you go back in time and you kill your grandfather which means you're never born which means you never go back in time so you don't kill your grandfather which means you're born which means you can go back in time to kill your grandfather... it's enough to give you a headache."

Grandfather Paradox be damned. More important things were pressing. "Back to the problem at hand, does this mass you want to send forward in time have to be human?" Stuart asked.

Jon glanced at his father. What was he thinking? He was casually discussing time travel with someone from the future? No one would believe this story.

"No," Pitcairn explained. "Just equivalent mass will be fine."

"So what can you send forward in time?" he asked.

Pitcairn glanced around the room. "The hospital bed, I suppose. That should work."

They watched in utter awe as the hologram pulled a gun-shaped device out of a pocket and pointed it at the hospital bed. Kirkland saw Scout pull out a scanner and record the bed's sudden disappearance.

Then, they stood in a bedless room.

"No tachyons," Scout said. "Because it's the source and not the destination. But there are no storms."

"Storms?" the hologram asked.

Scout moved toward the hologram, scanning him as well. "A week before, we had massive storms raging from JPL to Los Alamos -"

"Wait, JPL to Los Alamos?" Pitcairn interrupted him. "The storms were that massive?"

Scout squinted. "Yes. Tornadoes, high winds, torrential rains."

Pitcairn looked at both Jennifer and Stuart. "Were they transferred to JPL and Los Alamos?"

Scout answered cautiously. "Yes. Why?"

"Scite it," Pitcairn muttered. "We knew they got sent to temporal test sites. We didn't even consider they'd both be sent to the original test sites. We found Stuart Power at Los Alamos, but we didn't track Corporal Chase until she came here and we found a journal where your team was mentioned." No one had a clue what Pitcairn was talking about.

Stuart stepped forward. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, we lost both of you," Pitcairn said dismissively. "Spent a couple of days tracking you down. What were you saying about the storms?"

Scout continued. "They came an hour, stopped an hour and started again with increased strength. Rain, sleet, snow, high winds, tornadoes, lightning, you name it for seven days. On the 4th, the storms united and that's when we registered tachyons. After that, the storms have been breaking up, storming on the same schedule and are decreasing in strength. But you came here, and then you just moved the bed... there are tachyons but no storms."

"You got massive storms like that? We thought it was just something simple like a slight temperature drop," Pitcairn answered. "Geological reports talked about a rainstorm in early July of 2148, and we were using that as one of our trackers, but this? We knew that there was a meteorological function to the whole thing, but this is unprecedented! I've got to tell the others."

"You don't know why the storms happen?" Scout asked him.

The hologram shrugged. "Not a clue. I guess since I'm here in this time, more or less, moving something from this time, there wouldn't be any storms. Wait, the storms stretched between the two sites?" the hologram seemed to think for a moment. "That's not right. The storms should be raging in a radius from the site itself. It shouldn't stretch between the two... aw, scite it! It was both explosions!"

"Both?" several voices repeated.

"We thought that the explosion at the Power Base translated back through the wave to give each time fractal the strength it needed to push both targets to 2148. We didn't even consider that the Volcania explosion would have done the same thing because our time wave was supposed to reach a moment just prior to the explosion altogether! We thought we'd missed that one." The hologram walked a few steps forward and back in frustration. "What were we thinking? Easy. We weren't. Didn't even take the obvious into consideration! Actually, both explosions could explain why the storms stretched between the two sites."

"How?" Scout asked.

"No idea," Pitcairn explained quickly. "I didn't even know storms like _that_ were happening. That'll definitely be something to study up on."

Scout looked at everyone and shrugged. "It's their doing, they've got no clue, and we've been pulling our hair out over it trying to figure it out. They don't know much more than we do!"

Pitcairn looked at his chronometer again. "We only had a window of opportunity for a few minutes. It'll be over with at 7:16 a.m." He glanced back at Jon. "Look, Captain, getting your father back here was important for a lot of reasons. For a lot of us, getting Chase back was a happy accident and one we're glad to see happen. The Council didn't want to risk our future, so it's all on you. You can't fail."

"No pressure there, Jon," Hawk muttered.

Pitcairn didn't stop talking. "You've got to destroy everything about Dread whatever way you can. If you do that, then no one else from my time will try to, uh, _influence_ your life. They see Stuart Power as the pivotal life to be rescued in all this. Not Chase. Some of us, we like to think we know better."

Jon got a steely glint to his eyes. He understood the veiled threat that was more of a warning. "Don't worry," Jon said. "We'll stop Dread."

"Destroy him," the hologram warned. "Let's just say it's part of an understood deal. You get to keep Corporal Chase here with you, and we get to have our future."

The hologram began to shimmer and become transparent, and then it dissolved in front of them.

Scout waved his hand through the space the hologram occupied and touched nothing. "That's something you don't see every day."

**~0~0~0~0~**

Destroy Dread utterly.

Every nut, bolt, screw, circuit, biomech, computer monitor, keyboard - all of it. It had to go. It had to disappear.

It all had to be destroyed or they'd take Jennifer from him. Move her forward through time, and now Jon knew they had the technology. Now he could put a name to the people behind the mystery. He had the explanation for why his dad and Jennifer were alive and well and with them.

They'd gone for Stuart, they got both, and of the two, they didn't consider Jennifer's life important, but her loss of life was.

Jon didn't quite know how to channel the anger over that revelation. He felt Jennifer begin to waver and he quickly pulled her to him, supporting her weight.

"I'll say one thing," Stuart said, "life is not going to be boring with all of you, is it?"

"We're entertaining," Scout mumbled.

Hawk moved across the now bedless room. "Now what do we do?" he asked Jon. "How in the world do we destroy Dread? We're just one little Resistance group."

"Not anymore," Jennifer said, holding close to Jon's side. "And not like the one Pitcairn was talking about."

Jon motioned for Scout to push the chair over to them and he helped Jennifer sit down. "What do you mean?"

"It's something Pitcairn said. In the original timeline, Stuart didn't die at Volcania in 2132. Then, the timeline altered, and he did die. They tried to fix that, but instead of saving just him, they saved both of us only they sent us to 2148. Stuart was supposed to be leading this group for the last sixteen years, and he didn't. There's no telling what our jobs were on the team in the original timeline or even what we were like or what we did. The team that exists now isn't the team that existed in the original timeline because of that fact alone. They changed history, which means the little Resistance group that we might have been originally isn't who we are now but we have to do the same things."

Scout smiled and inputted some data into his reader. "I've got to put that interpretation into our database. Jennifer, that's brilliant! By changing history, they changed history so none of this would change history!"

Stuart crossed his arms, looking remarkably like Mentor for a moment. "And tried to get it as close to the original by trying to make it all right for everyone by keeping Jennifer here."

"But sixteen years," Matt finished. "That means whatever happened when you were in charge of this group during that time either didn't happen or didn't happen the way it did originally."

"Wait," Tank interrupted. "Does that mean that whatever Stuart did during that time wasn't important? It doesn't matter that he's back now, years later, just as long as he's back?"

That was a good question. "We should have asked Pitcairn," Scout mumbled. "This really is enough to give you a headache."

"Headache or not, Pitcairn told us what we have to do. Now all we have to do is come through," Jon muttered. "We've been trying to stop Dread. How do we destroy an Empire?"

"One day at a time, son," Stuart told him. "From what Matt told me, you've already made a good start on it."

Jon looked up at his father. Suddenly, he had a thought. He had always missed his father's wisdom and advice. Maybe it was Stuart's inspiration that helped them not only win the war but wipe out Dread? Maybe it's his presence and his insight that gave them the push they needed at the end? Was that why his being in 2148 was acceptable and why the people from the future hadn't moved him back to 2132?

Scout was right. This was enough to give anyone a headache.

At that moment, Doctor Kirkland walked into the room. "Doctor Power, it's been over two minutes... where's the bed?"


	13. Chapter 13

**Monday**

**March 25th, 2357**

**Cyclotron Laboratories**

Doctor Bareilles rushed into Custer's office, a big grin on his face. "Did you hear?"

Custer looked up from his work and shook his head. "Hear what?"

"Aderholdt, Barrett and Pitcairn did it! Stuart Power's alive and Chase has been moved."

Chase be damned. Who cared about her? But Power was still alive? That was not good for him. Still, he couldn't let anyone know. "How do you know?" he asked his associate. "I mean, how is that possible? The Cyclotron is still offline."

"Reports are coming up on the computers now. Those three sent their preliminary reports to the Council, Council filtered them to all of us. It's an attachment on the daily morning report. Take a look." With that, Bareilles turned and left.

Immediately, Custer logged into the network and found the morning report... he'd already read it... routine stuff... but his copy didn't have an attachment to it. What was Bareilles talking about? He went into the main memo system and downloaded the morning report from the Council's databanks, the one with the attached memo that was being circulated. He honestly didn't believe what he was reading. Those three used a new time wave transference technique - without the Cyclotron to power it? How was that possible? They had deduced a method of creating a stable time beam without the Cyclotron?

"Scite, scite, scite," Custer muttered under his breath. How could all this have gone so wrong?

Aderholdt, Pitcairn and Barrett had the technology to initiate a time wave _without _the Cyclotron. That meant...

That meant...

_That meant he had lost control of the situation._

He needed to assess his situation. There he was, still obscure, still unobserved. Nothing had changed in the world structure, at least, nothing of note. Not yet. With Chase alive but sixty years beyond where she had landed and Stuart Power moved sixteen years from when he should have died, history itself should have changed, but it hadn't. Then again, he might not be aware of a lot of temporal changes for at least seven days. He quickly brought up the current timeline and compared it to the original he had tried to change. The differences were... what? Infinitesimal? This wasn't possible. It just wasn't possible. Even within moments of changing a timeline, some type of difference should be registering on the monitors. You can't change history without changing history. That was an undisputable fact. And he had accounted for everything.

He reread the report in utter disbelief. Again, dry words, one following the other, describing the Council's plan to keep Stuart Power was alive and move Chase temporally to England sixty years after the fact, making the Power Team believe that it was one of Dread's soldiers who dispatched her after they had found her. Reports showed that an object was moved to the year 2208 just as planned.

But Stuart Power alive, either in 2132 or 2148, meant one thing to his family - its eventual fall from power.

The timeline hadn't cemented itself yet. It was still fluid. If he could pinpoint other various points in time, maybe he could minimize the damage to his family and perhaps reverse the downfall. That meant starting at the beginning, looking through the new histories created on the now current timeline so he would know exactly what point in time to target.

He started looking through the computer database. What had he missed? How had he -

Wait.

"What the scite?"

A background alert showed on his monitor. He'd programmed his alerts to tell him when certain files had been accessed but by people other than him. Someone had performed a search on his lab's computer logs? Why? Some of the files that were checked out were turned over to the labs when he ran the diagnostics on the Cyclotron. There was nothing to give anyone reason to -

Someone had checked _his_ logs?

How had he missed that?

He did a quick backtrack on the search to find out who the individual was and what they were looking for. The name was unknown, but whoever it was had a valid code. He rechecked the names of the files that were accessed. Most of these were erased off his computer. How could anyone have... the buffer? That would have been the only way anyone could have found these particular files, but they wouldn't still be in the buffer, would they? He was meticulous about erasing his searches. In fact, he was almost paranoid about it. Nothing could be tracked back to him. Not until he righted the timeline in his family's favor.

He followed the search as closely as he could. Someone had typed in a simple text search and found information of his searches still in the buffer. He just didn't understand how any of his work could still be in the buffer.

Whomever it was saw that he had targeted June 14th, 2132, and December 25th, 2147.

That means someone could easily put the pieces of the puzzle together and know he had targeted Stuart Power. That would also mean that someone knew that he created the fake Brophy Theorem. Someone knew that what he did created the situation where Chase was alive which could undeniably destroy the world as they knew it.

That meant someone knew what he'd done.

That meant that he was purposely excluded from getting the memo attachment.

That meant someone was creating a trap for him.

That also meant he had to make a quick getaway.

"Doctor Custer?"

William turned to find Administrator Collier with three guards standing behind her.

"I think we have a great deal to talk about, don't you?"

**~0~0~0~0~**

**Interrogation Room**

"You're real name is Byron Micklon," Collier stated, reading from the records Custer had worked so diligently to hide until the proper time they should become public. "You are a direct descendent of Dennis Taggart, the younger brother of Lyman Taggart known as Lord Dread from the Badderdays. Is this true?"

Younger brother? Little did she know. He was a direct descendent of Lyman Taggart himself through his son, Dennis. Still, Custer didn't say anything.

"There's a comment here in your file that your family claimed descendency from General George Armstrong Custer and his wife Libby. A DNA search was performed on the general and his wife, and they didn't have any children," Collier explained as she raised a sheet of paper from the file. "There were rumors that he unofficially married a woman named Monahsetah and fathered two children, but some historians believed that he had contracted an illness while at West Point and couldn't reproduce. Presumably, the two children were fathered by his brother Thomas. In short, the story you told about being Custer's descendent through his wife Libby is untrue. In fact, being General Custer's descendent in any way would be highly unlikely."

"Just a story I used to hear from my grandfather," he muttered. He knew his obscurity was gone. His efforts had been uncovered. He wasn't certain exactly how much they knew for certain at that moment or how much they pieced together, but he was willing to play the game of ask-don't-answer until he had a better idea.

"Really?" Collier suggested. She shoved the records into his hands. "I think you were told that you were a direct descendent of Dread himself. The man who would be king and was reportedly destroyed by the Power Team. Did you really think that by getting rid of Stuart Power, Dread would survive? Do you think one man alone destroyed the Machine Empire? There was an entire Resistance movement during the Badderdays. Stuart Power was just one man. He was important, but he wasn't as pivotal as history remembers him being."

Custer didn't speak. He knew the truth. Get rid of Stuart Power, and the only person capable of matching wits with Lord Dread would be gone. The Power Team would fail because it couldn't stand up to someone as powerful as his ancestor. Disinterested, he opened the records...

The DNA search was absolute. Dennis Taggart was Dread's younger brother? No, that wasn't true. He double-checked the information. The DNA was unquestionable.

But that wasn't right. Dennis was Lyman's son, the heir apparent to the throne of the Machine Empire. He was of noble birth. How could -

"We searched your office and your dwelling."

Searched? "You can't search any of my personal property without -"

"A warrant? We had one," Collier quickly explained. "Manipulating time is a serious offense, and I am making certain all my t's are crossed, i's are dotted and the lower case j's go below the line before acting. Everything is perfectly legal." She pulled a journal out from a pile of papers sitting on the desk in front of her.

"You had no right or authority to search any of my property."

Collier ignored him and opened the journal and began reading aloud.

"_Over two hundred years ago, my family held influential positions in both the government and the scientific community. University chairs, scholarships with our family name on them, libraries and high schools named for us. We were influential in the establishment of a peaceful order. Our research, resources, and family position helped move the world to that end. The stories handed down in my family bear witness to what was stolen from us. It was not a single moment in history that changed our lives. It was a ripple effect beginning at a particular point in time. Temporal theory has a single proven reality: change one aspect of history and all history changes. I alone now have the ability to correct the moment that began the chain reaction that removed us from our position. I will retrieve our legacy."_

They were silent for a moment, then Collier closed the journal and sat back. "Everything you did is in this journal. How you sought out the exact moment to murder Stuart Power, how you sabotaged the equipment to create a splittered wave fractal and convince everyone it was a true Brophy Theorem coming into law. All of it. Every word."

William Custer, a.k.a. Byron Micklon didn't look at the journal. Instead, he focused entirely on Collier. "Fiction," he said, knowing that denial was now pointless.

Collier nodded. "You're quite correct in that. Much of your assumptions were fiction. Not your attempt at destroying our world by murdering Stuart Power however."

His assumptions were not fiction. He was still a direct descendent of the Taggarts.

Collier laced her fingers together and leaned forward on her arms. "You were working under the assumption that Stuart Power's continued existence was what destroyed your family's place in society. You blamed him for the utter destruction of the Machine Empire and the Taggart family, Dread specifically. However, that's not exactly what happened."

He set aside the name Custer once and for all. Micklon leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. "Since we're speaking in hypotheticals and fictional plots, what assumptions would you consider correct?"

Collier brought out a journal of a temporal lifeline, the pseudo-record of an entire life of a particular individual.

"Stuart Power was very influential, that's true. He was a soldier of a sort, but he was also a figurehead in some respects. Brilliant, technologically innovative, a major player in the war, but he was not the only Resistance leader fighting in the wars. Myth and legend are more prevalent in his story than the actual facts. It has been believed for all these years that Stuart Power did more in the Badderdays than he actually did. He was a focal point for Dread's anger. The personal war between those two caused Dread to make mistakes by acting against Power without considering all the aspects of a plan. That meant other Resistance teams were almost beneath Dread's notice because he was concentrating on stopping Stuart Power and the Power Team. In short, history has been kind to Stuart Power. It made him seem to do more than he actually did or get the credit for things others did because he was famous. He had a major role to play in the war, and because of that role, the Resistance was able to perform tasks and win battles they wouldn't have otherwise. He wasn't the primary force for good behind the war nor was his being there the determining factor of the outcome. It was a mitigating factor."

She pushed another journal toward Custer. "You thought you were a direct descendent of Lyman Taggart. Maybe that's a story handed down from generation to generation in your family. According to your actual DNA, you're descended from Dennis Taggart, known as Dennis T to his friends. He was the leader of a Resistance group in Idaho during the Badderdays. He turned his back on his family, mainly his brother, when Dread began his attempt at world domination. He fought the Dread forces for years. When the Badderdays were over and Dread was destroyed, Dennis married, and they began a family. He used the last name Turner. According to some records that survived, he didn't want anyone to know who he was. He wanted to be obscure and help rebuild the world his brother destroyed."

She leaned forward, balancing herself on her elbows. "You thought it was Stuart Power that destroyed your life. In fact, it was your ancestor turning his back on his brother. Stuart Power had nothing to do with your bloodline's fall from prominence. You chose the wrong target." She sat back and watched him. "Not only that, the trackers you used to pinpoint those particular points in time... you didn't use Masterson or Jonathan Power to triangulate the exact temporal coordinates necessary, did you? It would have been too coincidental for Aderholdt and Barrett to have chosen the exact same trackers to find Stuart Power. You were trying to find the exact moment _your_ family line was removed from its lofty societal heights through a ripple effect. You tracked the moment of the explosion, didn't you? You know that Stuart Power and Dread were together at that moment. You were trying to make certain Power didn't walk away like he did in the original timeline. Then you pinpointed the explosion at the Power Base in 2147. It's a half-drecked way of pinpointing a temporal location, isn't it?"

Dennis T was Lyman Taggart's brother? Power's inclusion in the war wasn't the primary factor of his family's downfall? Micklon reached out and took the journals with shaking hands. All those years, he'd heard stories that his family had once been important. He'd always heard -

Collier continued. "Then there's Corporal Chase. Whereas myth and fiction permeate Stuart Power's lifestory, mostly facts detail Corporal Chase's life. It is true that her absence motivated Captain Power's need for revenge and his need to destroy everything remotely connected to Dread. On the new timeline, during the months that she was gone, Captain Power did destroy facility after facility, put Dread on the defensive in a way the Resistance had never seen before and gave the Resistance the momentum it needed to begin winning the war. We won't know the exact results after her return and subsequent disappearance until the timeline settles down. That should only take a few days, but early reports are remarkably positive."

Micklon sat back and stared at her.

Collier shook her head. "You didn't take her surviving into consideration. Then again, you didn't take the fact that both Chase and Power survived transit via wave fractals into consideration. You didn't consider that energy from an explosion could travel through a time wave fractal and act as a power source so a target could be moved successfully and not be deconvoluted in transfer. You never even considered the possibility of two explosions traveling the same way. You see, to be a true temporal scientist, whether it's a physicist or an engineer, you have to take everything into consideration or risk changing history and the future."

She gathered together all the paperwork and tucked them under her arm. "Remember, Micklon," Collier said as she stood and walked toward the door, "history is written by the victors and half of history is hiding what people don't want known. Even we don't have a clear path to the truth because it's obscured by myth, legend, stories and time itself. After all, history is just agreed upon fables. Maybe you should think about that while you spend the rest of your life in prison."

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Wednesday**

**July 10, 2148**

**Power Jumpship**

Six days had passed since the Fourth. One spectacular week of discoveries, reacquaintances, tall tale-telling, s'mores-making arguments, and a little scientific analyses of current events. A little fun, a little work, but all in all, it proved that the foundation blocks and the strong ties to friendship that built the Power Team were still there. Time hadn't ripped them apart.

That's not to say that the team's efforts to establish themselves as a six-person/one-personality-matrix team and integrate everyone's fields of expertise didn't meet with some difficulties. The world had changed. Jennifer and Stuart were brought up-to-date with everything that had happened, but the truth of the team being seven-strong in one place at one time was still hard to believe.

Perhaps the most difficult concept for them to deal with was the truth revealed to them two days earlier when Pitcairn had explained the situation to them and how they had to resolve it - they had to destroy everything to do with Dread and Overmind.

All in all, it had been a few days for the old/new Power Team crew to get settled in to their new reality.

However, there were still a few little bumps to deal with.

**~0~0~0~0~**

"You burned them," Stuart said, trying hard not to laugh.

"Says you!" Hawk was laughingly indignant as he flew the ship back to the base. "You never got the marshmallows soft enough to really stick to the chocolate or the graham crackers. Your s'mores fell apart! Mine, they stayed together and made for a well-stuck snack."

Sitting in the co-pilot's seat, Jennifer glanced back at Jon. He put up his hands and shook his head. Apparently, the great 's'more's making argument' was an ongoing family joke. "Don't get them started on how to stack charcoal in a barbecue grill," Jon said in a low voice as he walked up behind Jennifer. "We'll be here all day. How much longer, Hawk?"

"Just a few more minutes, and we're at the new base. And stacking charcoal is an art form, you know."

Just listening to the meandering rambles of everyone was fun for Jennifer. No one stayed on a single subject for more than a few sentences before another topic was thrown in. It was a massively entertaining conversation the others were having, and there seemed to be a need for it. Maybe there had been a lack of such easygoing talk for a long time? It was like her guys were dying for inane words and off-hand jokes.

Jennifer sat back and watched as the terrain beneath the ship changed from dead forests to a more wintry look. Even though she was healing up nicely and could walk across a room without too much help, her ribs weren't able to handle the g-forces of flying a ship. Hawk would still have that job for a while. This meant she would have to watch the view out the front screen as Hawk flew them to their new destination. The ship was flying straight and level, passing through turbulence without any hint of disturbance. It was as if the ship wanted to prove that she was every bit as ready to fly as Jennifer was.

"She knows you're co-piloting this flight," Tank told her. "She's on her best behavior."

"My ship?" Jennifer asked, a smile on her face. "She knows she doesn't have to be on her best behavior with me."

Scout turned in his chair and said, "You're going to love the new computer setup, Jennifer. I think Mentor likes it up here better than the other base."

"The database is much cleaner," Mentor's voice echoed through the jumpship.

"Cleaner?" Stuart asked.

Jennifer looked back and saw Stuart sitting next to Mentor's hologram. They looked like twins talking with each other. They looked exactly alike even though their voices were just a little different.

"We've amassed a great deal of data over the years, Doctor Power," Mentor explained.

"It should be interesting to learn all that," Stuart said. "Oh, and call me Stuart. All that 'Doctor Power' nonsense is a bit formal, don't you think?"

Jon pointed toward a mountain of glacial ice just on the horizon. "That's it, right there," he told her in a low voice.

Jennifer moved her gaze back to the front view screen. The mountain looked no different from any other ice structure Mother Nature had carved in the area. It was even better camouflage than the mountain had been for the Colorado base. "How cold is it in there?" she asked.

"Outside? Cold. Inside's nice and warm," Jon explained.

Looking around at all the desolation, Jennifer looked back toward Stuart and asked, "How did you build this base in secret?"

Stuart shrugged. "I didn't. It was originally designed as a radar station during the Cold War in the middle to late 20th century. It was decommissioned for maybe seventy years until some DNA researchers recommissioned it as a lab. They could store DNA samples and seed samples and use the cold as natural refrigeration for their tests. They wanted to create the largest DNA database by collecting samples from as many people as they could. They moved that lab, I don't know where, and left the facility empty. It can house up to fifty troops comfortably. A lot of the infrastructure was already installed - labs, computers, personnel quarters. All I had to do was redesign it, have them put in the updated hardware and include a few extras like a landing bay."

"You did it yourself?" she asked him.

"No. All the work was done by a select group from the Army Corps of Engineers. This was the same group that started working on reinforcing the defenses in Washington, D.C. when Dread attacked in those first days after he joined with Overmind. None of them survived," Stuart explained. "I wasn't certain if they completed Northstar before they were recalled to D.C."

"You've never seen Northstar?" Tank asked.

Stuart shook his head. "No. This is the first time."

Jennifer glanced at the sensor screen. "Is there a jump gate nearby?"

"Actually, there is," Tank punched a few buttons and brought up a set of coordinates on the sensor screen for her. "The captain designed it after Christmas last year, only it's not the same as the others we use."

Stuart looked at the readout on Tank's console. "It's fueled by oxygen and nitrogen," he noticed immediately. "Ingenious."

"Anyone tracking it would think they were looking at a brief lightning storm," Hawk mentioned. "But for this trip, we thought we'd take you two on the scenic route. We're almost at the base. Stuart, want to come up here and see your handiwork?"

Jennifer moved over slightly to give Stuart room, leaning somewhat against Jon as Stuart moved between the pilot's and the co-pilot's seat. She noticed Jon's arm was under hers, making it look like a pretext that he was bracing himself against the chair. He was still being somewhat proper in public, but when they were alone, he was more open and friendly. They were both taking the slow approach to their relationship - too much had happened to them for them to go too quickly. Some healing and readjustment needed to take place.

The view of the mountain range in the front screen got bigger, one in particular as Hawk adjusted the ship's angle to a particular mountain. The ice mountain looked real. There was no way to differentiate it from any of the other mountains by visual inspection alone. Then, a small 'door' in the ice opened to allow the jumpship to fly into the landing bay. That was the one small difference in the ice mountain. Hawk brought the ship down in a flawless landing. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome home," Hawk said as he brought the jumpship to a soft stop.

"Ship is flying better," Scout taunted him.

"Don't say it," Hawk warned jokingly.

That got Jennifer's attention. "Wait, what do you mean better? Tank just said she was on her best behavior. Has something been wrong with the ship?"

Hawk gave her a quiet laugh. "No," he told her. "Nothing wrong other than you weren't in the pilot's seat, and everyone here says I'm not as good at flying her as you are. They want to make it seem like it's the jumpship who wasn't happy."

"She wasn't," Jon said as he helped Jennifer to her feet. "You should have seen how she flew to JPL the day we got your emergency signal. Not a hint of a problem and flying faster than what she normally does."

"Wait, problems? What problems?" Jennifer couldn't believe that the team was being a bit blasé about... oh, the looks on their faces meant one thing. They were joking. It was the old one about how she could get the jumpship to fly better than anyone else. It felt normal to her, like she wasn't the fifth wheel and wasn't going to be.

"Let's give these two the fifty cent tour," Scout announced. "Now the base is laid out a little differently from the one we had in Colorado. Plus, it's got a lot more gadgets to play with..." his voice kept on going as he walked off the ship, the rest of the team filing out behind him.

As Jennifer took hold of the gantry rail to climb slowly down the steps, Jon right behind her to give assistance if she needed it, she took a look around the landing bay. Not quite as big, not nearly as warm but definitely stocked with tools and supplies. Scout's voice was echoing off the icy walls as he, Hawk and Tank showed Stuart everything they passed by as they walked.

"Are you all right?" Jon asked her.

She nodded. "I'm fine. It's just..." She didn't quite know what to say.

"A little overwhelming, I know."

"A little unreal too," she told him. "I keep having to remind myself that this is July and not December. And Stuart? This has to be so strange for him. In a blink of an eye, he's moved sixteen years into the future."

Jon chuckled. "No doubt, but he may be seeing all this as a huge scientific experiment. He's pretty good at adapting quickly to anything new, but I think the hardest thing for him to deal with is that I'm not a teenager anymore and Dread's destroyed a lot of the world."

She glanced up at Jon and saw the slight frown on his face. He hadn't talked much about Stuart being back or how he was dealing with it, but she could guess that he was feeling he was cheated out of being with his dad all those years. He needed Stuart as a boy, but he had learned to live without him as a man. Stuart wouldn't get to be the dad he wanted to be or watch his son grow up into a man. To have that view of reality turned on its head had to be somewhat disconcerting for both men.

Then again, they hadn't talked much about anything else he was feeling toward anything other than her being back. Sure, they did have that one important conversation they needed to have and a few conversations about what they wanted for the future, but Pitcairn's revelation had put Jon in a defensive, overprotective stance where she was concerned. The idea that some faceless somebody in the future could just take her if the team didn't do what they were supposed to...

He was scared, and Jonathan Power didn't get scared.

"It'll be all right," she assured him.

He took hold of her hand, and they began to walk in the direction the others took. "You're sure about that?"

"Absolutely," she smiled at him. "We'll do what we have to do just like we always have. Nothing's changed about that."

He squeezed her hand a little tighter. "But if I don't do what Pitcairn said I'm supposed to do, they'll take you away."

"I don't think so," she assured him. "I've been thinking about this. If we were to not destroy Dread in this new timeline where Stuart was sent forward sixteen years and I survived, then Pitcairn couldn't have existed to run this time travel experiment, right?"

"I don't know." Jon thought about it. "He said something about being protected from all the changes in timelines. And he did exist, which means we had to have destroyed Dread so he could tell us that we needed to destroy Dread. That's sort of like the Grandfather Paradox he mentioned." He paused, then looked her in the eye. "And what timeline are we on? The right one? The wrong one? The one that all the changes settled us on? Trying to figure this out could give someone a headache."

"So we don't try to figure it out anymore. It seemed Pitcairn didn't know a lot about it and he called himself a temporal physicist. We must have done what he said we needed to do, so we go on about our business and do our best and it should happen, right?"

Jon smiled as he leaned over and gave her a slow kiss. "I just don't want to lose you again."

She pushed a small strand of gray hair away from his face. She was still trying to get used to his longer, graying hair. He didn't have that before the base explosion. It was proof of the stress he'd been under for the last few months. "I don't intend to get lost again." Then she got very serious. "And I don't want to see you lose yourself while getting rid of Dread."

"What do you mean?"

"Pitcairn, you, both of you said you got brutal. You got vicious in your tactics, and that's not you."

Jon took a deep breath and looked down at his feet. "I know. But I was so angry at losing you -"

"It's okay to get angry," she said. "But you work through the anger. Remember what you said to me about being glad I got through mine? It was that conversation we almost had back at the old base?"

Jon smiled and nodded his head. "I remember."

"You can stop Dread and destroy absolutely everything in his Empire without having to become brutal and vicious," she said with certainty. "When I think about it now, just defeating him and stopping him really won't be enough. There will always be people who think like him and would use whatever resources Dread had to build another Machine Empire. And destroying everything isn't something you can do on your own. It's going to have to be a group effort."

"But Pitcairn said I did it," Jon reminded her.

Jennifer nodded. "Maybe history is wrong and it's more of a case that you led the Resistance's destruction of the Machine Empire? You just got the credit but you didn't shoulder the sole responsibility?"

Noticing the slightly relieved grin on Jon's face, Jennifer knew he liked that view of what they had to do better than the stress of having to destroy Dread and his empire just by themselves.

"Hey, you two!" Hawk's voice called back. "Come on! We're about to show Stuart the other ship in the maintenance area."

Other ship? Jennifer glanced back at her ship, then back up at Jon, quirking an eyebrow in the process. "Other ship?"

"Uh, surprise?" he suggested with a grin.

"We've got a second ship, and you didn't tell me?"

"I sort of mentioned earlier in passing," he said sheepishly. Then, he gathered a little courage. "I didn't want to come right out and tell you news that big when you were recuperating. I know how you are when you get your hands on something new, and a ship? You'd be up and moving around before the doctor let you."

Jennifer saw he was trying not to smile. "Forget my recuperating. What kind of ship is it?"

"Something I think you'll like. It's a ZF sprintship," he said quickly.

"A ZF sprintship? The absolute last type of independent ship to be built before the downfall of civilization? The fastest ship known to have been invented and put into production but was stopped due to performance problems? Can fly three times the speed of sound at mid-speed? Has enough power for a cloaking device? Has half the maneuverability of my TF jumpship, one-third the armaments, only two engines but can outfly anything in the air? Including Soaron?"

Jon nodded, clearly amused by her excitement. "That one. Hawk has had some problems with test-flights because of the cold, and I knew you'd love to get your hands on it. Kirkland's still got you on downtime, and it would have really bothered you if you couldn't inspect it because you were stuck in a hospital bed. Besides, we know how much you love the original ship, and we still fly the old one most places. The new one -"

"Jonathan Power," she laughed, "we have a ZF sprintship?"

He smiled as he hugged her around her shoulders, and they walked on down the corridor. "_You_ have a ZF sprintship," he said, his voice sounding happier than before. "I knew you'd want to get your hands on it as soon as you knew we had one and would want to get it wartime operational, but you couldn't when you were at the hospital. And until Kirkland clears you, you don't do any heavy lifting. You have one of us with you to help you work on the ship while you give it the once-over. Okay?"

Jennifer was so happy, she was almost bouncing.

"You're not mad at me at keeping this a secret?" he asked her.

"It's a ZF sprintship. I've got a new ship to play with while I'm recuperating? I get to completely reroute the operating systems to make it serviceable? I get to make certain every single system is working together? I can take it apart and put it back together to see how it works? Trust me, you're forgiven." She couldn't keep the thrill out of her voice. He grabbed her hand and led her toward the maintenance area where the sprintship was kept. "But we're still flying my ship on missions. Those ZFs are said to be a bit twitchy mid-flight. It's one of the reasons they quit building them."


	14. Chapter 14

**Wednesday**

**July 31st, 2148**

**Northstar Base**

It started as a thrum.

Then it evolved into a beat.

Then it became a pulse.

Then it began to thump through the walls.

Stuart placed his hand on the walls and felt the vibration pound against his palm, making what few pictures he had hanging in his room bounce against the surface.

"What in the world?" Stuart placed his hand on the door of his quarters and could almost hear the vibrations become a tone.

No, not a tone - it was a tune!

He walked out into the corridor and listened. He could hear Scout's voice sing in sync with the singer, the rhythm and beat echoing down the hallway. He couldn't make out any words other than 'Crocodile Rock.'

It wasn't a new experience for Stuart. There seemed to be music playing a lot of the time in any room at the base at some point during the day, but not quite at that volume level. Scout's voice was happy. Whatever that song was, it had a fast momentum and nice little beat to it. Stuart didn't recall ever hearing it before. He couldn't place the singer either.

"Getting used to the music?" Jon asked him as he walked around the corner.

"I am now," Stuart agreed. "Just out of curiosity, Matt told me that Scout's our resident expert on 20th century music. He loves the Rat Pack with Frank Sinatra. Loves 1960's rock and roll. I know he doesn't like disco and he's blocked it from being played. Tank said something about belting out 1980's power ballads, but does he sing like that often?"

"You mean loud and mostly on key?"

"Loud enough to shake the walls." Stuart pointed toward the nearby masonry.

Jon shrugged and smiled. "It happens occasionally. Especially if the song has a good beat, but he didn't sing for about seven months. We've been hearing all his favorite songs lately."

Those seven months? That explained it.

He listened as a second voice joined with Scout's. "Is that Jennifer singing?"

Jon listened for a moment. "That's her. She loves the 60's rock and roll and a lot of the 80's music too." He listened to the song for a moment. "I think that song came out of the 1970's?"

Stuart saw his son smile when he heard Jennifer's voice take up the chorus. That smile was something Stuart had gotten used to seeing because it was there whenever his son looked at Jennifer. At first, Stuart didn't know what he could or couldn't say to Jon about Jennifer as he watched their relationship progress and become closer. If Jon had still been fifteen years old, Stuart could have had that special father-son talk with him, but Jon was a grown man. Mature, independent, very much sure of what he wanted, much more experienced about life than a young boy. The time for the father-son talk was long over, and undoubtedly, Matt had had that talk with him years earlier.

Stuart knew the relationship between Jon and Jennifer had taken a more serious turn. There was no one particular moment he could point to and say 'voila,' but he saw their behavior change slightly from day to day. Matt and the others did as well, but not one word was spoken about it. Stuart just followed their lead. Jon and Jennifer were keeping things discreet and private, but some of the subtle distinctions were there that everyone quietly noticed and smiled about. Some handholding, private discussions, spending time alone, staying at the Passages overnight when they flew there for supplies or when Jennifer visited Doctor Kirkland for a follow-up... both Jon and Jennifer were - what was the old saying? Over 18, footloose and fancy-free? In any case, they were both adults, old enough to move their relationship along a little faster if they wanted to, and it seemed that people grew up fast in this new world he found himself in.

He felt that he didn't have the right to make any fatherly comment, helpful or otherwise, especially since Jon hadn't really sought out advice of that sort. Stuart mused that Jon may not need advice. In fact, he was at a loss at how to discuss certain topics with his son. When they first arrived at Northstar, started getting to know each other again and learning how to work together, he saw Jonathan Power the Captain making command decisions. Jon the Teenager was long gone. He wondered if he had lost the right to give Jon any fatherly advice since he'd been gone all those years. Did he have the right to be involved in Jon's personal life as anything other than a friend? It was a difficult path to traverse even after several weeks.

After they had arrived at the Arctic base, Stuart found himself in the position of odd-man-out. He didn't know where he fit in Jon's life or with the team as a whole. Jon led the team. Matt was second-in-command as well as being the one Jon discussed personal problems with. Tank gathered Intel. Scout and Jennifer took care of the maintenance on the computers and the transports. Jon and Jennifer, well, they spent a lot of time together when off duty. All of them had a place and a station and a job, and Stuart had no idea what he was to do.

Then...

Things began to change about week later. Not only did he get an idea about how he could contribute to the team, but his relationship with Jon also took a good turn at that time. He knew he had Jennifer to thank for that. She was urging Jon to spend more time with Stuart off-duty, not with her. Stuart understood his son's fears though. He was still worried that he'd turn around and Jennifer would be gone, sent somewhere else in time where he wouldn't be. He wanted to be with her as much as possible to watch over her, but as she told Jon, if the people from the future were to take her away, no one could stop them. That meant it was all right for Jon to spend some time with Stuart. Besides, she was an adult. She didn't need a mother hen hovering over her all the time, and if she did, there were three others who were vying for the job.

So one week after they returned to Northstar, after things had settled down and everyone was growing somewhat accustomed to their new reality, Stuart and Jon finally got to talk.

_The area dubbed 'the electronics room' was used mostly as a repair lab for every mechanical device at the base. A few long workbenches, a variety of pristine tools just beginning their useful life of service, a newly constructed matrix interface so Mentor could transfer into the lab in case he was needed - it was a workplace with a homey feel to it as Scout would say._

_Jon had enlisted Stuart's help in repairing Jennifer's powersuit. The shots it had absorbed from Blastarr and the biomechs when they infiltrated the Colorado base had done more damage than even Jon had realized. Wires were frayed, leads were burned and power paths were compromised._

"_It looks like she took a beating," Stuart observed as he helped begin the repair to the internal wiring of the torso armor. _

"_Blastarr had pretty powerful weapons," Jon explained. _

_Stuart held up the upper part of the suit. "This is the smallest one I made, wasn't it?" _

_Jon smiled and nodded. "And it was still too big for her. I had to cut it down a bit, rewire it -"_

"_Incredible job," Stuart admired. "I was planning on explaining how they worked to you, but things happened."_

_Jon reached over and grabbed the soldering gun. "Dread, an explosion, a little trip through time... totally understandable," he said, smiling._

_Stuart felt comfortable making small talk. "How did you reintegrate the wiring into the fabric if you had to cut it down? Actually, how did you deal with the wiring when you cut it down?"_

"_It wasn't easy," Jon explained. "I knew if I removed some of the wiring, I'd limit its abilities and functions, and I didn't want to do that. Then I realized that the suit was initially more like Tank's when activated. It would have created more armor than necessary for a pilot when powered on, so I removed that part of the wiring. With that gone, I had more room to work with."_

"_Redistribute the wiring and the circuitry through the now vacant areas." Stuart nodded his head. "Like I said, incredible job. What about the size?"_

_Jon smiled. "Did you know the suit material can shrink if you leave it in hot water long enough?"_

_Stuart laughed. "You shrank it?" _

"_It worked," Jon agreed, laughing as well. "But to be honest, I was worried the first time Jennifer activated the suit. There was no way to know if it'd work or if she'd survive when it first powered on. This one was altered. If I'd made a mistake -"_

"_It worked," Stuart pointed out._

"_That it did."_

_Their conversation meandered back to Jennifer. "She seems to be doing well after everything she's been through."_

"_Better than any of us could have hoped for," Jon explained. "Doctor Kirkland said she'll be on downtime for a few more weeks and needs to use the regenerator a few more times, but she'll be fine. I know her powersuit had better be fully functional by then. She'll want to get back out there as soon as she can."_

_Stuart noticed a decided happy tone in Jon's voice. His son was definitely pleased that Jennifer was back. "Between the both of us, we'll have her suit 100% by then, but if you don't mind my asking, then what?"_

_Jon looked up from the suit and frowned. "Then what, what?"_

"_When we were at the hospital, Matt showed me the last conversation you and Jennifer had just before the Colorado base blew up. She mentioned something about a talk you two were going to have. I was wondering if you'd had it."_

"_Ah," Jon stopped for a moment and then leaned back in his seat. "Yeah. We talked that morning before the hologram showed up. We got a lot of things said. A lot of things that needed saying."_

_The smile on his son's face told him all he had to know, but he didn't want to stop talking. "From that smile on your face, can I take it to mean things are good between you two?"_

_Jon smiled a little bigger. "Yeah."_

_Stuart was getting the sneaking suspicion that this wasn't a mere flirtation. In fact, he may have met his future daughter-in-law. Odd to think that since he and Jon were so much closer in age. It felt very strange._

"_You love her," Stuart stated._

_Jon nodded. "More than I thought I could love anyone. It hurt when I lost her, Dad. I just couldn't handle it. I was so angry all the time."_

"_I felt the same way when I lost your mother," Stuart agreed. "It was so hard just getting up in the morning, but I had you to take care of and my projects I was involved with to get me through the day. Would you believe building and programming Overmind was one of those projects?"_

_Jon bent back over the suit and rethreaded several circuits "I can believe it. I remember you worked late a lot of nights."_

"_I was just trying to keep everything together in an impossible situation. Keeping busy helped."_

"_How about now?" Jon asked him. "How are you doing?"_

_Stuart shrugged. "Trying to keep busy?"_

"_Dad," Jon prompted him. "You're fine when you've got a problem to solve. Since we've been here, it's just been busy work for you. We don't have a lot of scientific problems or inventions to work on at the moment other than repair work. How are you doing? Really?" _

_How had he been doing? Sleeping some, catching up with the work and the procedures, working out what was to him new technology - "It hasn't been easy," Stuart sighed. "What am I supposed to do here now, Jon? I'm sixteen years out of time, and you've got a team of specialists unlike any other Resistance group. I just don't know what I could bring to the team that might be helpful."_

_Jon put the suit down on the table. "Aside from the fact whatever you do has the people in the future moving us around like the proverbial pieces on a temporal chess board trying to get you back into the game? I'd say you have a lot to contribute. You're a scientist who can really balance the scales against Dread. Pitcairn said you were leading this team -"_

"_On the original timeline," Stuart corrected. "I wasn't 'dead' for sixteen years in that one. This isn't the same timeline. Everything's different. Even you and Matt are different, but I still feel the same. I just feel out of place and useless."_

"_You're not useless," Jon argued. "We need you."_

_Stuart laughed at that. "No, son, you don't need me. Not even you. You're a grown man, you're leading a successful Resistance group, you give hope to the people, you've got your own life -"_

"_Wait, whoa, Dad," Jon interrupted him. "Why do you think I don't need you? For the past sixteen years, Mentor was my lifeline. Not a day went by that I didn't think of you or want to talk to you again. I could see you in Mentor, but he wasn't you. He was a part of you. He had your face and your voice and in a way, it seemed like I hadn't lost you. There was a point where we thought we'd lost him, and I couldn't face that. It was as if I was losing you all over again." Stuart saw a small tear form in Jon's eye. "I might be a grown man, but sometimes I still feel like a fifteen year old who wants to know his dad is right there beside him, helping him make the right decisions because sometimes, I don't really know what I'm doing." He paused for a moment to let his words sink in. "I never stopped needing you."_

_And at that moment, Stuart could see his fifteen-year-old son in the grown man before him. The one that wasn't ready to be without a parent. "I wish I'd been there," he said. He cursed the future scientists who removed him from his son's life, not for the first time. _

_Jon turned back to his work. "I'm sure Matt will be more than happy to tell you about all the things I did. But if it's bad, don't believe him," he joked._

"_Oh, you mean like the time you wrecked the skybike because you were trying to outfly Soaron? Dove it right into a lake?"_

_Jon glanced around and then said in a loud whisper, "Do not let Jennifer hear that. She may love that jumpship of hers, but you don't mess with the skybikes either."_

"_She does seem to have a single focus when it comes to her aircraft. By the way, how did you convince her to stay her away from the sprintship for now?" he asked, very curious. "I would think a pilot would enjoy having a ship like that to fly."_

_Jon smiled slightly. "It wasn't me. She can't wait to get her hands on that sprintship and rip its insides out to learn how it ticks, but you know those bits of conversation we had on the flight here about the other jumpship behaving differently?"_

_Stuart nodded._

"_She doesn't believe that the ship flies better for her than anyone else. She's thinking that something's wrong, so she's got Scout helping her run diagnostics and doing some routine maintenance. Once she's healed and is convinced that the old jumpship is in top working order, she'll be on that sprintship before you can sneeze," Jon told him._

_His voice changed slightly in pitch when he spoke of Jennifer. Come to think of it, so did the others. Even though she was back, her loss was still fresh in their minds. "I'm guessing Scout had to work alone on the ship while she was gone."_

_Again, Jon nodded. "They've always been close friends. You've seen the way they work together. When she was gone, Scout seemed to lose his... balance, for lack of a better word. I mean, we all lost a lot when we lost her. Hawk thinks of her as a daughter and Tank is like this over-protective uncle... I guess we all dealt with it any way we could."_

"_And you?"_

_Jon paused for a second. Looking up at Stuart, he said, "I got angry. I wanted Dread to hurt as much as I was. I started destroying everything of his I could find."_

_And he was supposed to according to Pitcairn, but Stuart didn't mention the obvious. It wouldn't help. "We all deal with loss in our own way, son," he told him. "We just hope we can do something good or at least something necessary when we hurt and lash out like that."_

"_Like you tried to do when Mom died?"_

_Stuart sighed. "I should never have built Overmind."_

_Jon shook his head. "You did good, Dad. Don't ever doubt it."_

_Stuart shook his head. "No. You and the others have done good. You fought a monster. I helped create a monster. I programmed it."_

"_No," Jon disagreed. He looked at Stuart with a serious look in his eyes. "Matt always said you took a gamble, and if it had paid off, you would have stopped the wars. I remember how bad it was then. Stopping those wars was worth any risk. It wasn't you who created a monster. It was Taggart when he merged his mind with that computer's. You understand the original programming for Overmind. You know Taggart. That could give us an advantage over him."_

"_And maybe be able to destroy it all?" Stuart asked. "Pitcairn seemed absolutely certain you could."_

"_But history's been changed. What if what they think we did isn't something we set out to do? What if it was just an aftereffect of the battles we fought only they thought it was deliberate? They're looking back at history from the future. How can they know exactly what happened and how and what we were thinking or feeling at the moment?"_

_Stuart considered the idea. "History as an aftereffect. Almost like the storms being the aftereffect of time travel? That's an odd way to look at what's been happening with us. What made you think of that?"_

"_Jennifer," Jon said, a small grin on his face again. "She said that maybe it wasn't me who destroyed Dread and his machines. What if I led the Resistance attacks? Or what if I just got the credit for what happened and it was a group effort?" _

_Stuart thought for a moment, then asked, "That sounds a great deal more plausible. But would it matter what they thought as long as you got Jennifer back?"_

_Jon smiled and shook his head. "No, it wouldn't."_

"_So, destroy Dread," Stuart said._

That was the start. They became more and more comfortable talking to each other, but their relationship hadn't quite gelled back into that of father and son. They were at more of a relatives-who-hadn't-seen-each-other-in-years stage. Friendly, polite, but becoming more familiar.

There was a break in the music and then a softer, more melodic ballad seemed to roll through the air. Stuart didn't recognize it. He was going to have to take a quick course in 20th century musical hits if he was going to keep up.

"Change of pace?" Stuart asked.

Jon answered, "Righteous Brothers. I think that song was used in a movie."

Stuart laughed at that.

"What?"

"Something you just said. You _think _something happened in the past. I keep wondering about what Pitcairn told us. What do the people in the future think is real?" They thought that Stuart Power was the pivotal person to bring forward, and that Jennifer's death was what turned Jon into the destructive force they believed him to be. They honestly had no idea that Stuart was inconsequential by 2132. Jon, Jennifer and the Power Team were the important ones. They were the ones who fought and risked their lives and even died to stop Dread.

"There's no way to know, Dad. Maybe history isn't quite as easy to figure out as the people living in the future think it is?"

The music suddenly stopped. Scout's voice echoed loudly down the corridors. "You are NOT going to believe this! Captain! Guys! Lookee here! Look what we found!"

Stuart and Jon ran to the Control Room, Tank and Hawk rushing in from another direction.

"What is it?" Hawk asked. "It has to be important if you turned off the music."

Jennifer and Scout pulled up various graphs, charts and live videos. "Latest meteorological updates from the Los Alamos to JPL corridor. After the last storm, no other storm kicked in. They're over with. Exactly one week from the hour the storm with the tachyons in it showed up, they were gone. All storm clouds are cleared out. Everything's quiet, but get this - the storms kicked out a lot of pollution in that area. We're getting some feedback from a couple of Dread's satellites. People are seeing blue skies for the first time in a long time, and they're staying. Clouds aren't rolling back in yet."

The stolen satellite photographs showed a clear sky over 700 miles of land in the western United States. Ground could be seen in the photo, dead trees, filled up lakes and streams. It was a sight that had gone unseen for a lot of years.

"Don't you wish we could figure out how to make storms without traveling through time? We might be able to clean up the planet," Scout said.

"That technology is still far ahead of us," Stuart added quickly.

"We might have told Pitcairn about it. For all we know, someone in the future is creating storms now?" Hawk suggested.

"But Pitcairn didn't know we had storms," Jennifer reminded them. "He seemed surprised."

"But if it could be done, it would be bad," Tank commented. "Control the weather, control the world. Isn't that what we were afraid that Dread was doing when the storms were going on?"

"Another slippery slope," Stuart admitted reluctantly. "Try to do something for the good, and it can be used for evil."

"I'm wondering if our friends from the future are facing that problem," Jon told him as he sat down next to Jennifer. "They seemed to think they made a mistake."

"Tough. They can live with it because we like their so-called mistake." Scout closed a few of the data windows. "I wish we'd had more time to get information out of that hologram though. There's no telling what we're supposed to do."

"Destroy everything remotely connected with Dread," Jennifer repeated. "Facilities, robots, programs, Volcania -"

"We're gonna need a bigger ship," Scout joked.

Jennifer gave him a playful punch in the arm. "Not one bad word about my jumpship or the sprintship or you won't ever get to go joyriding ever again," she cautioned him, smiling.

Jon glanced over at Stuart and said, "Did I mention that he likes to mangle old movie quotes too?"

Stuart had to smile to himself. This group wasn't just an ordinary Resistance group. This was a group of five friends who really enjoyed each other's company. More than that, they were happy being in each other's company. How many people in that devastated world could sit around and crack jokes the way the team could?

Hawk cleared his throat. "Has it bothered anyone else that Dread hasn't seemed the least bit interested in the storms? We haven't heard a word out of him."

Five heads turned toward him. No one had thought about Dread's lack of attention during their recent adventure. Finally, Scout answered. "To be honest, I hadn't even considered him. Storms happening on schedule would have interested him, wouldn't they?"

"Would they?" Jennifer asked. "He's a machine now, right? He transferred?"

"Into a biodread body," Jon sighed. "He's lost all his humanity now. Maybe the storms wouldn't interest him?"

Hawk placed his hands on the console and leaned over. "He's going to be very interested if he finds out that Stuart and Jennifer came back during those storms and that there's a connection."

"Don't let him find out," Jennifer suggested. "He'll find out soon enough that Stuart's alive and well and working with the Resistance. Let his being back be a mystery. That should knock Dread off his game, right?"

"For a little while," Jon admitted. "And it could put the two of you at the top of his hit list."

Tank crossed his arms and grinned. "How is that different from any other day?"

For the last few weeks, Stuart had marveled at the group standing before him. He was constantly amazed at the difference he was seeing then and the team he met on the 7th. The group he met then was angry, confused. This group was happy, had a sense of humor and wonder and purpose. He didn't quite feel like a fish out of water or even a fifth wheel anymore, but even though he was out of his own time and was only starting to find his place in the war against Dread, he knew he was with the one Resistance group who could get it done.

"No difference," Scout mumbled.

Jon glanced at his chronometer. "And it's suppertime. I think Jennifer and I got KP tonight, right?" He stood, held out his hand which she took and they walked off towards the kitchen. Stuart smiled at the sight they made. All low-key, nothing overt, their actions kept private, but someone could feel how powerful their connection was just by looking at them. The team and the war came first, personal endeavors came later, but Stuart was now certain - he'd met his future daughter-in-law.

"Ah, suppertime and why not have a few tunes playing?" Scout pressed the play button on Mentor's music player. A fast-paced song began to sound, one that Stuart didn't know. Scout did, so did the others, and they were singing along with the singer as they went on about their work. The only word he could understand was 'Footloose.'

**~o~ This Domino Won't Fall ~o~**

**Tuesday**

**March 26th, 2357**

**Jet Propulsion Laboratories**

One week.

It had been one week to the day they started the great attempt at 'saving' Stuart Power. This was the day that the timelines would cement themselves and they could see if history had been righted. Or at least propped up correctly. Delphi Aderholdt, Jillian Barrett and Elias Pitcairn had regrouped at JPL to watch the monitors as the timeline waves began to coalesce and converge.

Elias crossed his fingers. "Come on, come on, come on..."

"Look!" Delphi pointed toward one end of the time wave. "It's flattening out... the timeline isn't wavering..."

Jillian increased the screen resolution as the waves straightened out into a flat line. "It worked. The timeline's back on track. Our history hasn't been changed even though it's been altered. We still exist like we did before this scite-up!"

"YES!" Elias jumped up from his chair and threw his arms around his co-workers. "And a happy ending was had by all!"

Delphi gave Elias a punch in the ribs. "Just let us know the next time you want to play it that close to the vest like that, will you? A Plan B like that is too hard on the nerves."

Without hesitation, Jillian handed Delphi a steaming cup of hot coffee. "It wasn't Pitcairn. It's because you haven't had any coffee in a few hours. You're no fun when you're decaffeinated."

"Or unemployed," a voice sounded behind them.

The three physicists turned and saw Administrator Collier enter the room. "Doctors, I am not merely the lead councilperson for the Temporal Administrative Council. I am also a temporal physicist. Retired. I do know how to read a timeline. Which one of you stopped the hologram from doing its job of removing Corporal Chase to a safe temporal location and, instead, sent something of an equivalent mass?"

No one moved for a moment, then, finally, Elias stepped forward. "It was me, ma'am. I really couldn't stomach the idea of killing an innocent person or sending her decades forward in time, alone, just because we could. I thought if they knew what was at stake by only telling them something they needed to do without telling them exactly how to do it, they could handle things themselves. Looks like that hunch was right. The timeline we're on now was once an adjacent one, then all the changes we made meant it slid to even another adjacent timeline and now it's all settled into place. We just checked the general historical continuum and the timeline itself just before it solidified, and Dread and Overmind were completely destroyed. So was everything like their bases, labs and other facilities. Everything remotely Dreadly was crashed, smashed and trashed. Looks like our world is secure. No clusterdrecks and scite-ups anywhere."

"And the Power Team?" Collier asked.

"All on track with the adjusted time line," Pitcairn continued. "All lived happily ever after exactly the way they were supposed to, sort of."

Collier sighed heavily. "I take that to mean Major Masterson, Lieutenant Ellis and Sergeant Baker's lives continued on as indicated in the original timeline. Dare I ask about Stuart Power?"

"Alive and well and the architect of a new JPL and Los Alamos," Delphi explained. "He's the one who rebuilt the labs on their former sites. He also helped build a few hospitals and schools. Became a teacher at one of the rebuilt universities, was involved in a lot of different types of research... basically, he had a lot of scientific fun after the wars."

Collier looked at all three of them, no emotion showing on her face. "Did Captain Power and Corporal Chase specifically have a change?"

The three scientists smiled and nodded.

"Does that mean that a new mitochondrial DNA line has been added to our genetic base in this timeline? One that can track part of its origins back to a certain pilot and captain of a particular Resistance team in the Badderdays?"

"Five new lines since they had five kids. The youngest two were twins, boy and a girl," Pitcairn muttered. "Gotta love a happy ending, ma'am."

Collier stepped forward, looked Pitcairn up and down, and then extended her hand. "Good job, Doctor Pitcairn. This is one time that insubordination, unapproved time manipulation, and willful acting produced the positive result." Then, she pulled Pitcairn closer and said in a very low, very menacing voice. "Do something like that again, and I'll have your job."

"You wouldn't want it, ma'am. You'd have to work with Delphi, and she's no fun if we run out of coffee," he said jokingly. When Collier didn't smile, Elias said, "Understood, ma'am. Won't happen again."

"For some reason, I doubt that," Collier explained. "I wouldn't expect anything less than unapproved actions from any of you, not after this incident." She then held up a file. "And you might like to know that some anonymous _someone_ sent us a file with information on Doctor William Custer who's really Byron Micklon."

"Anonymous? But ma'am, uh -"

"_Anonymous_," Collier repeated, her voice leaving no room for any other interpretation. "It was an anonymous source that left the information that Custer was behind this mess in order to get the Taggarts back in power. In fact," Collier continued, "once it was determined that DNA logs had to be accessed to get the information on Custer, and DNA logs are restricted to medical personnel only, it would not be good for this person's career if it's proven that this information was obtained by someone not in the medical profession, correct?"

All three scientists remained silent but they nodded their heads.

Collier just smiled. "Well, whoever the _anonymous_ individual was, I'm sure they'll be happy to know that William Custer, a.k.a. Byron Micklon, has been taken into custody and is facing temporal disruption charges as well as attempted murder charges and records tampering. That's a long stretch in prison. A more thorough investigation into our hiring practices and verification procedures will be necessary, and I will need your assistance on that, Doctor Pitcairn. You seem to be quite good at getting around computer systems. Oh, and there'll be no need for anyone in this room that's not on the Council to mention Custer or the name Micklon again. _If you take my meaning_."

They understood what she was saying in crystal clear letters.

Collier turned to leave but turned back. She looked at them all with a strange expression on her face.

"You did good even though you didn't do it correctly, and you gave them a happy ending which they wouldn't have had otherwise. Manipulating time is a serious offense, Doctors. The unauthorized manipulation of time could carry a prison sentence under normal circumstances."

"Ma'am," Delphi began to say.

"However," Collier interrupted her, "apprehending a time manipulator from the Cyclotron Labs was a good thing, and in this case, let's just say it balances out a certain unauthorized time manipulation done from JPL and Los Alamos, shall we?"

There was no stopping the appreciative grins they wore or the nods they gave Collier. "Thank you, ma'am," Jillian said lowly.

"There is, however, one thing that could be said should the topic ever arise - which I will make certain it doesn't as a means of keeping the scales balanced. It's another avenue of research that wasn't considered by anyone," Collier added. "We all worked under the premise that the original timeline we were on was the correct one, and that was the one that was changed. Did anyone ever consider that we were on an adjacent timeline from the very beginning? Perhaps it was incorrect and that moving Stuart Power ahead sixteen years and Jennifer Chase a few months moved us to the correct timeline? After all, we do labor under the theory that the universe has a preferred timeline, and if it's removed from that timeline in any way, it will try to get back on that timeline even if it takes years. Ages. Eons. Perhaps we were just on a comfortable adjacent timeline to start with?"

Jillian leaned over and said, "We didn't change history because someone changed history? We corrected it?"

"It's possible since there was no research done in this respect," Collier observed. "We are mere spectators to history, but even though we see a great deal, we don't know all of it. We didn't walk in their shoes, as the old saying goes."

Elias put his hands in his pockets. "Ma'am, are you saying we did the right thing?"

"I'm saying that's how I'm concluding this experiment and writing up the Council's report. This time. Regardless of how the events that took place in the Montana hospital in 2148 unfolded and the subsequent outcome of those events, everyone did their jobs correctly and as ordered," she told them. Then, with a stern look in her eye, she said, "The Jennifer Chase and Jonathan Power we know from history deserved their happy ending, but people don't always get what they deserve. Just remember one thing - it's our job to keep history on track no matter who deserves what, not change it _just_ because we can. The bad has to happen as well as the good, and bad things happen to good people whether we like it or not. This time, you were lucky. Next time -"

"Understood, ma'am," Delphi agreed. "No next time."

No, no next time, and if there was a next time, they'd have to be a bit more secretive about it, more obscure. After all, obscurity sometimes had its advantages.

**THE END**


End file.
